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powerbottomblake · 4 years ago

Text

the P in Penny stands for (V8′s) Protagonist

So Monstra! Interesting name! Reminiscent of Monstro, the name of the whale from Disney’s Pinocchio (1940).

This confirms that the whale is indeed, here to complete Penny’s Pinocchio allusion. In other terms, Penny is the protagonist of this volume. The main conflict is her conflict; taking down the whale is her endgame and her turning point.

More undercut because apparently I am cursed with not knowing how to make brief and to the point meta

We know that RWBY uses the narrative beats of the original allusions (with some decisive tweaks that align with its overall hopepunk vision and themes), going as far as having direct visual parallels to the source material (Adam vs Bees fight/the original Beast vs Gaston fight anyone?).

In the original Pinocchio movie, Pinocchio is tested three times before finally achieving becoming a little boy, and I think, likewise, Penny faces three tests before becoming a fully flledged huntress and maiden:

- Setback n°1: Pinocchio, still new to the world, the very concept of morality but eager to “do good” and willing to listen to Jiminy Cricket’s guidance, is tricked by a duo of conmen; in the movie, it’s into captivity, but the original story takes a much darker turn where the evil cat and fox - one pretending to be blind (Emerald and her perception bending Semblance) and one pretending to be a cripple (Mercury) - actually cause Pinocchio’s “death” through hanging (the author abhorred naughty children and was very...extreme about it). This is V3 Penny in a nutshell, discovering friendship and bonds and values through her own Jiminy, which is Ruby, but being set up by Mercury and Emerald to fight a losing battle that ends in her apparent “death”.

- Setback n°2: Pinocchio is embarked on a trip to Pleasure Island, an apparent playground especially catered for everyone to be happy! and have fun! but oh wait they’re actually being turned into jackasses geared for labor or sold to the Dust I mean the salt mines! You’ve guessed it, this is Penny’s V7 arc. Atlas Academy is Penny’s Pleasure Island, masquerading as a safe place where but the veneer of Ironwood’s civility and apparent conflicted utilitarianism finally cracks to reveal how it’s ultimately a place of indoctrination, producing no actual people-serving Hunters but perfect soldiers concerned more with following orders than doing right, and where the disadvantaged and the poor are ostracized, taken advantage of and ultimately sacrificed. Pinocchio escapes Pleasure Island with Jiminy’s help, but not unscathed, having grown donkey ears and a tail. Likewise, with Ruby’s help and constant strong supportive presence, Penny proves herself fit to receive the maiden powers and escapes Atlas, but she’s still not completely free of Ironwood’s hold, still having to grapple with his and the AceOps’ manipulation tactics, still not sure what her role, who she is and how she fits really are. Which bring us to the third and last test:

- Setback n°3: the Whale. In the original movie, Gepetto gets swallowed by the whale when he tries to follow Pinocchio to Pleasure Island to save him. Pinocchio then dives in, saves Gepetto and, in the process, apparently “dies”, before finally earning his existence as a “real” little boy after that show of bravery and self-sacrifice. And I think these are the beats to look for in Penny’s V8 storyline. As of Episode 3, Penny is about to join Pietro and Maria, and there have been strong hints (and by that I mean we were basically hammered over the head) that she’s about to be “hacked” by Watts. How do the original narrative beats play out? Here’s how I think it fits:

Gepetto is swallowed by Monstro: After Penny is effectively “hacked” and by that I mean that while her soul and spirit remain unchanged, Watts hacks into the mainframe and forces her to surrender control over her body the same way we’ve seen her do (but willingly) for Pietro. Penny essentially ends up trapped inside her own body as it follows Watts’ commands. I suspect Watts will force her to take Pietro and Maria (who’s of interest to Salem by being one of the last remaining SEW, and I strongly suspect her soul/aura could be used to make more of whatever the Hound is, but this is a whole other matter to delve into in a separate post) to Salem.

Pinocchio dives in to save his father and takes down the whale: I think Pietro and/or Ruby will appeal to Penny/be in enough danger that she will snap out of Watts control on her own, effectively reclaiming her bodily autonomy on her own and then creating a mayhem big and terrible enough with her powers that will take down the whale and give everyone else enough time to escape. This will be Penny’s heroic moment and her stand. Right now, everyone is making the mistake of having people protect the maiden powers. Penny realizes what makes her a maiden is to use those powers to protect the people; it’s a decision she makes on her own that cements her as a true Maiden and a hero of the people.

Pinocchio “apparently dies” but is then granted his wish and becomes a “real” little boy: Here I think Penny takes down the whale but goes down with it. We don’t see her die again onscreen (I think it would be overkill to show her “corpse” a second time and would cheapen her dying at all. In general I am wary of the resurrection trope being overdone or coming without a cost because it severely undercuts the emotional payoff of a death), but I think by the end of V8 she’s MIA (which would make her the second person Ruby loses that way, but also the first to return to her so). I think Penny uses her powers to stall Monstra, and I’m willing to bet good money that whatever Penny does next has to do with the Gravity dust that keeps Monstra afloat. The thing with Gravity dust is that, it does push things off the ground, but it can also pull things towards it. I think whatever number Penny pulls on the gravitational field ends up pulling her down in that sillage as well.

I know the popular theory is that Penny “dies” again and Pietro sacrifices his life to resurrect her one last time, and I can see it happening, but here’s the thing: RWBY subverts popular tropes, exploring new (and more hopeful!) paths. Just look at Qrow: RWBY said, oh the mentor figure, scarred and haunted by his past? is not just another stepping stone whose death cements the hero on his journey, but becomes a character with a drive of their own, and an arc of their own, and who gets to pass the torch and live to see it burn well and bright and to the end. Gepetto lives and mourns the apparent death of his son but is there to welcome him home when, rewarded for courage and abnegation, Pinocchio earns the right to become a human boy. I think Pietro, too, will live, and get to welcome a Penny that has finally earned the right to call herself Mantle’s Protector, no longer Ironwood’s puppet (heh) nor an extension of her father but an actual established hero of the people, around whom Mantle can rally and who can work with the right people (Robyn and the Happy Huntresses) for the right reasons and outcomes, people and reasons she herself chooses and decisions she herself makes and a power she’s reclaimed and accepted and knows how to use.

Penny’s quest has always been one of identity, slowly transforming from getting her bearings and realizing what makes her humanity is her soul, her ability to develop and deepen and protect her bonds to people and her natural empathy and kindness (V3′s ”am I worthy of calling myself human, too?”); to navigating morality, the nuances of doing good and the need to make her own calls and judgement of what is right and wrong (V7′s “who should I protect? what should I follow?”); to now, having established that she’s worthy of being one, Penny still has to find how to be a maiden, what that role entails for her and how she can finally fit as herself and into this new role, 100% reclaiming herself, her body (even from Pietro!!), her title and her mission. V8 (and maybe onwards) is the culmination of Penny’s identity journey, and I see it playing very much as an Iron Giant moment.

“You are who you choose to be,” says RWBY (and Ruby!) to Penny.

“Superman A human, and a hero, and a maiden” will be her answer.

And just like the Iron Giant, Penny saves the world, and rises again.

#rwby spoilers #rwby theories #rwby8 #penny polendina #rwby meta #I haven't written meta in. so long this has taken me embarrassingly long to assemble #also incredible how ruby is there every step of the way huh #is this nuts and dolts colored. ye #I am SO into Penny's everything rn #this volume's theme is going to be SO GOOD #identity...penny and oscar but also RUBY #anyway Penny's maiden arc is gonna walk so that Yang's turbo blasts #my meta

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bigskydreaming · 4 years ago

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Ive been reading some debates on whether or not Dick has LoA training because of the Vengeance Academy stuff and was wondering what you thought about that. Do you think this counts?

Yes and no? I mean, lol, it depends on your purposes for exploring this train of thought.

Thing is, I personally think it would be a mistake to view “League of Assassin training” as some complete singular thing that you either have or you don’t have, like a specific training regimen or course work for lack of a better analogy, that you either make it to the end of and have in its entirety, or else it doesn’t matter.

And I also think that part of the reason for viewing it this way is fandom’s tendency to try and rank the Batkids, according to a lot of various arbitrary variables like skillsets they do or don’t have.....which, if you’ve followed me long enough, you know is something I heavily disagree with, the trying to rank them in skills or competency in general.....as I tend to be more interested in ways this found family that I do ultimately gravitate towards for their ability or potential to be actual FAMILY, can like.....work together and come together rather than so constantly be pitted against each other. Like yeah, I’ll rant to Kingdom Come about times they’ve been pitted against each other in terms of my feelings on those specific instances or how the dynamics played out in them, but that’s in terms of scenes or stories that already exist....for the most part my thing is not really looking to INCREASE the divide between the characters, but rather the opposite.

So like......my point here is I’ve mentioned the League of Assassin training Dick likely has from his time at Vengeance Academy myself, but not in the interest of like......adding to his ‘rankings’ within the Batfam or being like anything the others can do he can do better, as frankly, I don’t think the time Dick spent at VA puts the training he got there as directly comparable to the time Damian or Jason or Cass spent with the League or League trained tutors....but that’s not really my aim in exploring that line of thought. Rather, I look at what League training Dick might have as being more a possible source of insight into experiences his siblings have.

After all, the thing about the League of Assassins is they’re very good at what they do, but what they do isn’t inherently all that different from any of the other hand-to-hand combatants throughout the DC Earth. I mean, depending on what continuity you go with, in most of them Bruce himself trained with the League or various League affiliated teachers before he came back to Gotham to be Batman, and he just sorta took what worked for him and put aside all the more lethal applications of their training and knowledge. But his own training methods when teaching Dick and the other Robins and Batgirls no doubt included more than a little overlap with League skills and training, because not all of their knowledge and expertise is STRICTLY lethal....as Bruce himself has shown, and later on Jason and Cass and Damian....most of what they can do can just as easily be repurposed for non-lethal combat. So in a lot of ways, depending on your interpretation of things and what angle you’re going with, all the Batkids can be said to have some degree of League training.....the same training Bruce himself had.

So when I talk about Dick having League training from his time at VA, Ilike I said, I’m talking more about insight, things he could glean from having firsthand knowledge not just to various League techniques or skills, but also League training methodologies and mindsets. Dick was only there a few weeks, at most maybe a couple months, and the thing is....you can pack a LOT into fairly short term experiences. That’s what boot camps are, essentially, and that’s how I viewed VA....a short term but extremely rigorous and intensive boot camp for prospective League recruits, as Shrike used it to put potential League candidates through their paces with little regard for their health or longterm prospects if they couldn’t make the cut. I called them prospective League recruits but its important that the kids weren’t recruited into VA itself first....they were literally kidnapped off the streets like Dick himself, and forced to prove themselves daily in their training and the missions Shrike set up to advance that. And all of that can be extremely motivating and act as a pressure cooker that packs a ton of training and skill acquisition into very short periods of time......BUT.....that’s not ever going to measure up to all of that being equally in place and acting as a pressure cooker when training Jason, Cass, Damian, etc over even LONGER periods of time, y’know?

BUT. Equally true is all of that is never going to measure up directly to the still extremely intensive and longterm training Dick himself received OUTSIDE of VA....just one on one with Bruce, training with the other Titans, hell, this is a guy who was an acrobat on the world stage before his parents died. Every day of his life he’s been training intensely. VA isn’t just a footnote compared to the lengthier League training some of Dick’s siblings underwent, its a footnote in the overall tapestry of Dick’s own training. And I have extreme reservations about the way League training is referred to as something various Batfam members have in addition to or on top of their other training as reasons for why they’re an even better fighter, etc....same as when Talon training comes up for Dick in AUs....when like......Bruce, Dick and the Batfam overall have never NOT ultimately defeated the League and the Court of Owls every time they come up against them.....so why does assassin training so often get regarded as this ‘leg up’ over the Batfam’s primarily non-lethal approach to combat, as though its a superior skillset? If its inherently superior, why do the assassins keep losing to the Batfam, I’m just saying. So on that front, the idea that “was trained by assassins” is innately translatable to higher elevations in the eternal quest to rank the Batkids, like.....just does not work for me and that specifically tends to be where people lose me here, not whether or not Dick has this training at all in the first place.

Another way to look at things here is like....let’s take one specific skillset: Dick’s use of escrima sticks in his fighting. Now, this DIRECTLY hails back to his time at Vengeance Academy. It was a literal plot point, that VA is where Dick first trained with escrima sticks and discovered an affinity for them. Once he was back with Bruce though, he didn’t do much further with this while Robin, but upon becoming Nightwing, he picked them up again and RENEWED his training with escrima sticks, becoming extremely proficient with them and making them his signature weapon.

Now, is Dick’s status as one of the best fighters with this particular weapon because of his several weeks boot camp when he was ten? Again - it just depends on what you mean by that specifically. If you’re asking did he gain the proficiency he’s known for with that weapon AS a ten year old during that short span of weeks - hell no. His proficiency comes from the intensive, regular training he does with them here and now, as an adult, over a course of years, still constantly growing and improving day by day. BUT at the same time, you can ask the same question and examine it through the lens of “would he have ever discovered and explored and FURTHERED his affinity with this particular weapon if not for his time training at VA”.....the answer could still very well be no. Thus his training there matters, its just its not the only thing that matters, and the context and qualifiers that go not just with this question but the reasons for asking that question and the purposes you intend for the answer.....all of that matters too.

So to circle back.......do I consider Dick’s time at Vengeance Academy to be him having League of Assassin training?

Yes, but I must specify that my reasoning for that, and for exploring that line of thought, have absolutely nothing to do with my view of Dick’s overall status as a fighter, and everything to do with my view of him as a brother.

I think Vengeance Academy was tough and brutal, and did a lot to increase and hone Dick’s skills in various areas over an extremely short period of time. I think that it absolutely left an impression that shaped his training and fighting in later years whether in terms of preferred weapon choices or even choices he makes in the heat of the moment, like Last Laugh (which I think absolutely built upon Dick’s feelings about having once stood over a similarly unrepentant and mocking Two-Face years earlier, gun in hand, poised to make a choice.....as well as Dick’s awareness of how many times Two-Face, like the Joker, has busted out of jail and hurt and killed more people since that time).

But I also think that Dick would still be one of the foremost fighters in the DCU even without his time at VA, and that his short time there is not anywhere close to being the reason he’s at the heights of skill and aptitude that he’s reached over the course of years and years of rigorous, intensive training.

So while my answer remains yes, he has League training and it matters and counts, my reasons for bringing that up will never be because I think it adds to his status or reputation as a fighter, or is necessary for him to be as highly regarded there as he is.....but more for what his time at VA, his firsthand experiences with their approaches to training, the methodologies and ideologies they train kids with, what all of that gives Dick in terms of insight to members of the League, and to those people League members have trained, like his siblings.

One thing I’ve long wanted to see fandom explore more in the context of Jason’s views on killing is the fact that so much of that was shaped while he was in the pressure cooker of being freshly resurrected, traumatized, still an impressionable teenager, with feelings of obligation towards the League for the Pit’s rejuvenation of his mental faculties, taking him in and training him, and like......feeling isolated and abandoned by everyone else who’d previously known and loved him, thinking that he had no one who really cared about him, and that not only was he dependent on the League for his survival at that time, but like, he owed them and he was that much more open to being persuaded of their way of looking at things.

And thing is, in terms of like, scale and shit, Dick’s experiences in Robin: Year One and his own mindset at the time and how vulnerable he was mentally and emotionally, they’re not the equivalent of what Jason was going through but like I’m always saying, when you stop looking at trauma in terms of arbitrary rankings and stop pitting what the various Batkids have been through against each other’s experiences and just like......look for potential common ground, this opens up SO MUCH potential bonding, insight and understanding between the brothers and positions Dick to be so much more capable of intuiting even a sense of what Jason went through at the time and why he was clinging so desperately to things he may or may not have actually believed in (at least so strongly) if circumstances had been different, etc....but you get what I mean, I think. There’s so much that can be done with this angle, that’s opened up entirely just by virtue of Dick having SOME shared experiences here.

Because while like I said, in terms of actual training, Bruce has a lot of the same skillsets and knowledge the League does, and his own history with them, its the MINDSET that’s so key here. The one thing that sets Bruce and his experiences when he was a young man with the League and League affiliates apart from Jason, Damian, Cass, etc.....is that Bruce went looking for training, and never was without resources or options. The League-trained Batkids though were either approached (or ‘approached’) by the League at key low points of extreme vulnerability in their formative years, when they HAD no other options (or felt they didn’t) or else were just outright raised by them like Damian or Cass, with no knowledge of anything else until they left or escaped. And that puts everything through an entirely different filter, because its that specific element of vulnerability, of having no one else to turn to or anything else to cling to or put your faith in, that renders you particularly vulnerable to being influenced or exploited by those who seem to hold all the cards there.....and its a shared insight that Dick can have into various of his siblings BECAUSE of his League of Assassins training, as short as that might have been, because of the specifics of why it was so intense and influential despite how short a time it was.

So. In conclusion:

Does Dick have League training because of his time at VA? My answer is yes, but not if the follow up is anything in the vein of “and how does this factor into which of his siblings he can or can’t beat while sparring.” In that case my answer is yes but YAWN. If however the follow up is along the lines of “and can this open up tons of doors for potential conversations, bonding, trauma-unpacking or camaraderie with siblings due to their own histories with the League and its training methods and teachings and mindsets” then my answer is YES GOOD NOW LET’S HAVE SOME MORE OF THAT PLZ.

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bookcoversalt · 4 years ago

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Have you noticed the latest edition of Charlie Bowater can only draw one (1) face? She did The Princess Will Save You and Cast In Firelight both YA Fantasy set to be released this year. And they are how you say... the same fucking cover

Ah yes so you saw the same tweet I did

I know I literally just posted that we cannot outlaw book covers from looking like each other, but ! Oof!

The only thing that softens the blow here is that Charlie has improved at representing nonwhite features such that characters look like POC rather than tan white people, although,, that bar was low. Anybody remember the ACOTAR coloring book.

(Would you have guessed that 2/3 of these people are nonwhite? Or even that they’re supposed to be three different men? I guess all the men in Prythian have the same haircut?)

But that minor victory is mostly lost in the quagmires of the fact that Charlie’s style is to give everyone instagram face:

I wouldn’t even call this “Sameface” necessarily: that implies limitation, that an artist is only capable of drawing a single facial structure competently. Bowater is incredibly technically talented, she just chooses to give everyone catlike fae eyes and the cheekbones of a starving nymph. (My previous post on this here.)

But I don’t really blame her for that, or for these hilariously identical, nearly devoid of personality covers. Artists are allowed to do whatever they want. Artists who make art for covers are being art directed by designers and marketing teams who bear responsibility for how the finished pieces turn out.

No, this is our fault, as a community and an industry and..... society, kind of, for valuing character portraits that are “pretty” (“pretty” being an extremely loaded, culturally subjective concept) over art that actually Says Something About The Story. Bowater’s style happens to dovetail perfectly with what we currently collectively find pretty, and so we’ve put her art on a pedestal at the cost of everything else art can or should do for our stories.

And this is understandable: in contemporary western culture, pretty is a value unto itself. Seeing our characters portrayed as pretty denotes them as special, as smart, as powerful. It’s almost impossible to de-program ourselves from that reaction. There are approximately five kajillion studies on how beautiful people are at personal and professional advantages; how they’re perceived to be happier, healthier, more successful, and how those perceptions can translate into realities. (Nevermind how thinness and whiteness enter that equation, see above note about “pretty”.) I would love to see more “average” or weird- looking characters abound (and be accurately visually represented) in the YA/ Genre lit sphere, but for now... everyone is pretty.

Which sometimes means everyone is pretty boring.

But that’s just the specific, "What’s the deal with Bowater’s success in book circles and her style and all the sameiness” part of this equation. What if we backed up and asked: why character art at all? Beyond a question of “pretty”-ness (and general obvious Artistic Quality), why do we gravitate towards it, what's the purpose of it, how does it fall flat in a general sense, and how can it be utilized more effectively?

This is something I think about all the time. I follow writers on social media (because..... I am a writer on social media, regrettably), and we have an enormous collective boner for character art. “Getting fanart [of the characters]” is one of the achievement pinnacles constantly cited when people get or want to get published. Commissioning character art is something we reward ourselves with, or save up for (WHICH IS GOOD AND CORRECT. FREE ART IS GREAT BUT DO NOT SOLICIT IT. PAY YOUR ARTISTS). And like???? Same????? We love our stories because we’re invested in our characters. Most humans, even prose writers, are visual creatures to some extent, and no matter how happy we are with our text-based art, it’s exciting to see our creations exist in that form. So we turn that art into promo material and we advocate for it on our covers-- because it’s so meaningful to us! It goes with the story perfectly!! Look at my dumb beautiful children!!!!!

But on an emotional level, it’s hard to grasp that it only means something to us. Particularly when you take into account the aforementioned vast landscape of beautiful visual blandness of many characters (in the YA/ genre lit sphere, that’s pretty much all I’m ever talking about), character art can be like baby photos. If you know the baby, if that baby is your new niece or your friend’s kid, if you’ve held them and their parent texts you updates when they do cute shit, you’re probably excited to see that baby photo. But unless it’s exceptionally cute, a random stranger’s baby photo isn’t likely to invoke an emotional reaction other than “this is why I don’t get on facebook.”

Seeing art of characters they don’t know might intrigue a reader, but especially if the characters or art are unremarkable-looking, it’s doing a hell of a lot more for the people who already have an emotional attachment to that character than anybody else. And that’s fine. Art for a small, invested audience is incredibly rewarding. But like the parent who cannot see why you don’t think their baby is THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BABY IN THE WORLD???? I think we have trouble divesting our emotional reaction to character art from its actual marketing value, which.... is often pretty minimal. This is my hill to die on #143:

Character portraits, even beautiful ones, are meaningless as a marketing tool without additional context or imagery.

I love character art! I’m not saying it should not exist or that it’s worthless! Even art that appeals to only the one single person who made it has value and the right to exist. And part of this conversation is how important for POC to see themselves on covers, whether illustrations or stock imagery, particularly in YA/kidlit. I’m not saying character portrait covers are “bad”.

I am saying that I have seen dozens and dozens of sets of character art for characters who look interchangeable, and it has never driven me to preorder a book. (Also one character portrait for a high-profile 2019 debut that was clearly just a painting of Amanda Seyfriend. You know the one. There’s nothing wrong with faceclaims but lmfao, girl,,,,)

I’m sure that’s not true for everyone! I am incredibly picky about art. It’s my job. There’s nothing wrong with your card deck of cell-shaded boys of ambiguous age and ethnicity who all have the same button nose and smirk if it Sparks Joy for you.

But if your goal is not only to delight yourself, but to sell books, it’s in your best interest to remember that art, like writing, is a form of communication. The publishing industry runs on pitches: querys, blurbs, proposals, self-promo tweets. What if we applied that logic to our visuals? How can we utilize our character design and art to communicate as much about our stories as possible, in the most enticing way?

Social media has already driven the embrace of this concept in a very general sense. Authors are now supposed to have ~ aesthetics. “Picspams” or graphics, modular collages that function as mini moodboards, are commonplace. But the labor intensity and relative scarcity of character art visible in bookish circles, even on covers, means that application of marketing sensibility to it is less intuitive than throwing together a pinterest board.

Since we were talking about it earlier, WICKED SAINTS, as a case study of a recent “successful” fantasy YA debut, arguably owed a lot of its early social media momentum to fanart.

(Early fanart by @warickaart)

The most frequently drawn character, Malachiasz, has long hair, claws, and distinctive face tattoos. WS has a strong aesthetic in general, but those features clearly marked his fanart as him in a way even someone unfamiliar with the book could clearly track across different styles. Different interpretations of his tattoos from different artists even became a point of interest.

(Art by Jaria Rambaran, also super early days of WS Being A Thing)

Aside from distinctiveness, it's a clear visual representation of his history as a cult member, his monstrous powers, and the story’s dark, medieval tone. The above image is also a great example of character interaction, something missing from straightforward portraits, that communicates a dynamic. Character dynamics draw people into stories: enemies-to-lovers, friends-to-lovers, childhood rivals, platonic life partners, love triangles, devoted siblings, exes who still carry the flame-- there’s a reason we codify these into tropes, and integrate that language and shared knowledge into our marketing. For another example in that vein, I really love this art by @MabyMin, commissioned by Gina Chen:

The wrist grip! The fancy outfits! These are two nobles who hate each other and want to bone and I am sold.

In terms of true portraits, the best recent example I can think of is the set @NicoleDeal did for Roshani Chokshi’s GILDED WOLVES (I believe as a preorder incentive of some kind?):

They showcase settings, props, and poses that all communicate the characters’ interests, skills, and personality, as well as the glamorous, elaborate aesthetic of the overall story. Even elements in the gold borders change, alluding to other plot points and symbology.

For painterly accuracy in character portraits on covers, I love SPIN THE DAWN. The heroine looks like a beautiful badass, yes, but the thoughtful, detailed rendering of every element, soft textures, and dynamic, fluid composition form a really cohesive, stunning illustration that presents an intriguing collection of story elements.

The devil isn’t always in the details, though: stark, moody, highly stylized or graphic art with an emphasis on textural contrast and bold color and shape rather than representational accuracy can communicate a lot (emotionally and tonally) while pretty much foregoing realism.

The new Lunar Chronicles covers are actually the best examples I found of this (Trying to stay within the realm of existing bookish art rather than branch into All Art Of Human Figures Forever):

Taking cues from styles more typical of the comics and video game industries. (Games and comics, as visual mediums, are sources of incredible character art and I highly recommend following artists in those industries if you want to See More Cool Art On Your Timeline.)

TL;DR: Character art and design, as a marketing tool (even an incidental one) should be as unique to your story and your characters as possible, and tell us about the story in ways that make us want to read it. I tried to give examples because there are so many ways to do this, and so many different kinds of art, and I could give many more! But I’m bored now. So to circle all the way back:

These are not just bad because they look like each other, although that is embarrassing and illuminating. These are bad covers (although,,,,, PRINCESS is the far worse offender, at least FIRELIGHT suggests a thoughtful cultural analogue) because a desire for Pretty Character Art overrode the basic cover function to tell us about the story. We get no sense of who these people are, what their relationships are, what these books are about beyond the most general genre, or why we might care. The expressions are vague, the characters generic-looking, the compositions uninteresting and the colors failing to be indicative of anything in particular.

They’re somebody else’s baby pictures.

(And yes, that’s the CRUEL PRINCE font on PRINCESS. I better not have to do a roundup post but it’s on thin fucking ice.)

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raifuujin · 4 years ago

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Hello! I may regret asking this bc I'm doing it out of impulse. I always respect your opinions, it's really nice to see a person who can differentiate canon/fanon well, being realistic. I like that you spend time, enjoying things you love. I'm also amazed how you can passively ship everything and not judge others about it too hard. Anyway. Even if I feel unreasonably guilty for others, I want to know what you think of romantic compatibility?.. of HeiShin. Since you made good points with KaiShin-

To be fair, my passive shipping is also a kinda generic ‘does this idea someone has presented look cute? yes, yes it does’ thing. I might not actually ship everything (some exclusions do apply), but if other people are making content and just enjoying something, I just chill in the corner and go ‘cool, not my thing, but you do you’. Chilling is a nice way to go about staying long term in fandom in general.

But anyway, yes, logic overanalyzing of HeiShin. Hmm... It’s always been a little odd to me why KaiShin tends to be what I see casually compared to HeiShin, tbh.

I mean, I get why KaiShin is popular and all, but... the friendship between Heiji and Shinichi is one where you can change pretty much nothing about how they interact with each other and just say they’re romantically interested. It’s the kind of relationship that, if it were done with another female character instead of a male, there would already have been a love rivalry story with Ran. The kind that male writers tend to only portray so well because they have a very specific idea for what romance is and, because the two characters are guys, casual intimacy and camaraderie can exist without any very obvious romantic attraction writing throwing it off. Then the fans can take that foundation and add a romance however they want, whether by using the tried and true love drama that works for any ship, or by doing a subtle shift where it feels almost too natural how the canon characters could end up together.

It might be that people are too used to a friendly rival character relationship in media in general. It can come out of any genre, while the ‘rogue and the lawful one trying to catch him’ is slightly less common and the one people gravitate toward when given the option. (And Kid stands out so much.)

Heiji and Shinichi have plenty of compatibility, though. Even... five years ago (which I had to look up and I’m not sure how I feel about 30 days of DCMK being that old), I thought they had the best chemistry from a pair who wasn’t a canon ship. (And more than a few who are canon ships, really. The HeijiShinichi relationship is OP, but shouldn’t be nerfed.)

Strictly focusing on how they might be when romantically paired with each other, just imagine this: Them just hanging out, Heiji doing something stupid that makes a mess, they’re both laughing. Shinichi good naturedly calling him an idiot, but also becomes aware that he’s focusing on Heiji’s smile, has a moment of ‘oh no’, and then tries so hard to not blush. Heiji is 100% oblivious to other people’s interest in him, so Shinichi has a lot of time to process his exact feelings before deciding how to approach Heiji with them.

Heiji being dense to feelings while Shinichi tends to understand how people are feeling (and can then consider why they might be feeling certain ways) in general is a fun idea to play with. Certain parts of their personalities are complete opposites, but the kind that either can appreciate about the other. Completely in sync when it comes to logical thought process, but they sometimes have different ways of approaching things on a personal basis, just overall good supporting and working off of each other. ShinRan compatibility would best be compared to like. A puzzle whose pieces connect perfectly, solid connection in complementing each other. (Most canon ships are meant to be this kind of complementing.) HeiShin would be when you have another puzzle in the same mold, put the pieces from both wherever looks good, and it still makes a good looking picture. It’s a similar concept, but not in the way it was built for, or how it was expected to interact with other pieces. How their personalities and backgrounds were built to interact as rivals works perfectly in creating the base for a different relationship. (Moreso than KaiShin, which probably wouldn’t include a border to the overall puzzle, and not everything slots in as nicely because they’re not even from the same brand of puzzle much less mold, but man it can look great when done well.)

There’s probably more I could say, but I know I’m rambling at this point. HeiShin is a ship that I’d need to try and pick one aspect at a time to hit all the points that could be made about how it’d work as a romantic relationship. I don’t have it narrowed down to any individual aspects atm to talk about though, so a general ramble happens. ^^;

#Anon #rambling #KaiShin does have the advantage of being a ship I've touched on multiple times #And like #Seeing posts or art or thinking about their personalities gave me specific things to focus on #I'm sorry Heiji; but even as my second fave; I haven't absorbed nearly as much of your fan content as I have Kai #I don't even know if he has a characterization in fanworks that's much different than in canon #My time spent reading fics in the past doesn't tell me anything #It doesn't feel like he was mischaracterized #But in general I don't recall fics where he was written seriously as a character that well #(Because I did read majority Kaito fics and those made Heiji a side character)#So then I have rp characterizations to go off of for fan writings #Which is a very different kind of writing and doesn't give me more than like #Two topics about Heiji in general; much less if there's a topic to address for when he's shipped #firstworldfandomproblemsramble here /bricked

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bucket-of-rice · 5 years ago

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'The Chosen One': In the midst of a career year, Morgan Rielly has become the Leafs reluctant star.

Scott Wheeler. 5th April 2019

His nickname in junior hockey was “The Chosen One” because everyone knew just how good Morgan Rielly was — and they wanted him to know it, too.

He doesn’t like to talk about it though. He didn’t then and he doesn’t now.

“It rings a bell,” he said of the moniker.

“You get to your junior team and you make nicknames for each other and that’s just your first experience of junior hockey. And really riding the bus with older guys and experiencing what it’s like to be a young rookie with older, 20-year-old men on the team when you’re 16.”

Nine years after his Moose Jaw Warriors teammates coined the nickname, Rielly is in the midst of a career year that will conclude with a debate over his merits as a Norris Trophy candidate and the season’s best defenceman.

“Whenever I see him, I still call him ‘Chose,'” said Joel Edmundson, now a Blues defenceman. “When I’m talking to my other former teammates, we still talk about him as being ‘The Chosen One.’ It’s weird how nicknames like that stick with you forever.”

Last month, Rielly became the third Leafs defenceman to ever register 70 points in a season, joining Borje Salming and Ian Turnbull. He’s the first 20-goal-scoring Leafs defenceman since Al Iafrate in the late 1980s.

But Rielly’s success didn’t come overnight. This is his sixth season with the Leafs, and even though he’s a star now, he has never thought of himself as one.

Those who know Rielly chalk it up to his modesty.

That was true when he was with the Notre Dame Hounds, a team he captained to a national championship. After his time with the Hounds, he was selected second overall by the Moose Jaw Warriors in the 2009 WHL Draft.

“The most important thing about him is he’s just a good person and a good friend,” said James Melindy, Rielly’s defence partner at Notre Dame. “His hockey obviously speaks for itself, but he’s a leader and he was a leader at a young age on our team and it’s so good to see a friend like him do well.

“It was nice to be able to give him the puck and let him do the rest.”

Steve Watterson, a billet with the Warriors, could see it in Rielly when he refereed the Hounds’ Triple-A games. That season, when the Warriors recalled Rielly for a few days around Christmas, teammate Travis Hamonic invited him to stay at the Wattersons during his visit. By the time Hamonic — a second-round pick of the Islanders — was traded to the Brandon Wheat Kings, the Wattersons knew they wanted Rielly as their next billet the following season.

Early in Rielly’s rookie season, he had already endeared himself to the Wattersons’ children, 10-year-old Alexa, 7-year-old Brennan and 4-year-old Brooklyn. No matter what was happening, he always made time for them whether it was playing cards, mini sticks or ping pong. For that, Watterson, a lifelong Canadiens fan, was swayed into becoming a Leafs fan.

“It was a lot of fun. Morgan was full of energy,” Watterson said.

“Nothing but good memories. You can’t help but want to see the Leafs do well and exciting things for Morgan.”

Despite the fact Rielly was the youngest player on the Warriors, his teammates never thought of him as a rookie. As players graduated and moved on, that stuck with them.

“He was just one of those guys that you wanted to play with, you wanted to be around off the ice. As soon as he came in, you could tell that the guy just had a characteristic that made people gravitate towards him,” said defenceman Dallas Ehrhardt, who now plays for the Manchester Storm.

“On the ice he was such a dynamic skater and player and off the ice he was such a good teammate.”

On a team where the blueline was built around big defencemen like Edmundson, Dylan McIlrath and Kendall McFaull, Rielly played differently.

“He’s a guy that really wanted to win,” Edmundson said. “He was just naturally so talented. You could see it. When he stepped on the ice, he just took over games. You knew he was going to be an NHL player just the way he could skate and rush the puck. He could go end-to-end like nothing.”

Despite standing out on the ice, Rielly made a point to fit in with his teammate off it.

“He was just one of the guys,” Edmundson said. “Whenever I see Chose, we definitely share some laughs.”

“Whenever I think of him in junior, it’s just him picking the puck up behind the net and just going through the whole team. In the D zone, he battled hard, too. When guys went to the net, it wasn’t easy against him. Even when he was 16, he was built like a man.”

Rielly left his mark on the Warriors’ staff too.

Dave Hunchak, Moose Jaw’s head coach during Rielly’s rookie season, remembers the moment he realized there was no holding the defenceman back. It was late in a game against Prince Albert when Hunchak, who’d relied on his veterans all season, turned to the rookie for the final shift of regulation. Rielly leaped over the boards, straddled the blueline and placed a shot top corner to tie the game.

Hunchak had always known Rielly was gifted. However, the Warriors were a veteran team and Rielly had only been getting regular minutes. That moment changed everything.

“He made a move that just dropped everyone’s jaw,” Hunchak said. “He was very quiet, very unassuming, very shy person. But he had a tremendous work ethic, he knew what he wanted to do and he was consistent in his work ethic every day.”

From then on, Rielly never let up.

“His skating ability was second-to-none at that point and it was a treat to watch. He would make plays that would make you shake your head at times, but they would work out for whatever reason for him. And if he made a mistake he wasn’t shy to go and get the puck back,” Hunchak said.

“He realized that he was a bit of a risk-reward guy at that time and we had to work real hard at 16 to convince him to play in his own end first and it took him time but then he just figured it out.”

It wasn’t always a straight path.

In his NHL draft year, Rielly blew out his knee. The Wattersons saw him go through those ups and downs firsthand. They saw the tears and heard the heartbreak in his voice. They sat in on conversations with his parents as they debated the risks of rushing back.

After seeking opinions from multiple doctors, Rielly was reading off a list of pro athletes who had come back from the same injury in six months and promising Watterson that he’d best it.

“He just kept saying, ‘That’s going to be me, I’m going to find a way to be faster than those dudes and sure enough he made it back for playoffs and he had the emotion and the heartbreak but it was short-lived with Morgan and it switched right to ‘What do I have to do to get back there?’” Watterson said.

“I couldn’t believe how it played out. You just can’t write that stuff. It’s just sheer determination and he outplayed all the odds in that situation.”

When the draft came around and the Leafs picked him fifth overall, the Wattersons were there to see his hard work come to fruition.

Longtime Warriors general manager Alan Millar will never forget Game 4 of the second round of the playoffs when Rielly, who was still doing strength and conditioning and hadn’t travelled with the team, was at their Medicine Hat hotel when they arrived back at 3 a.m.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. No down time, no pouting. After he got the surgery done, I don’t know, you’re talking days not weeks and he was back in the gym,” Millar said.

“I’ve never seen a young man work that hard on rehab. He wanted back in the lineup. He wanted to win a championship. That’s a credit to him and his character and leadership. It didn’t take me very long to realize that he was pretty special, both on and off the ice.”

Assistant coach Mark O’Leary remembers two things about Rielly. One was the regular phone calls he’d get on off-days when Rielly wanted to come in to skate or work out. When the team did skate, Rielly was always the first player at the rink and the last to leave.

Two was how popular he was with his teammates and members of the community. People at the high school, O’Leary said, still talk about Rielly and the way he would help kids he didn’t know. O’Leary said he still hears people talking about the defenceman at the local Tim Hortons.

“There was no doubt inside the walls of our rink in terms of what kind of player he was going to be,” said O’Leary. “Not just the skill that he had, but probably what doesn’t get talked about enough, which is his work ethic. There was nobody in better shape. He did things outside of what normal people would do in terms of getting better.”

When he was replaced as the star rookie on the team by Brayden Point, Rielly grew into a leadership role naturally.

“He was a big part of our team, a high profile guy who I looked up to a lot,” Point said.

“He would dominate games in our league and he was fun to play with. You could see back then that he was going to be the player he is today. He was always so good. We’ve both come a long way since then. He was a great guy and still a friend today.”

Ehrhardt has paid particular attention to Rielly’s career. Part of it, he said, was a matter of the small-town nature of Moose Jaw (they all went to the same high school, Vanier Collegiate) and the way it forced them together. But there was something else about Rielly, too.

On a recent trip to Texas, Ehrhardt caught one of the Leafs’ games against the Stars and noticed Rielly was doing all of the same things he did in Moose Jaw.

“I think everybody who played with him at that time kind of knew. The way he was able to move the puck out there, at 16, he was already miles ahead of everyone around him,” Ehrhardt said.

“And it wasn’t just his skills, it was the way he was thinking through the game. He was already two steps ahead of everyone. It was one of those things where it was fun to watch. And nowadays he has just really taken off with it.”

There’s also a maturity about Rielly that was evident even when he was in high school but has since turned into a leadership role as the top defenceman with the Leafs.

In hindsight, Edmundson said he knew, too.

“Thinking back on it now, it does not surprise me one bit. Especially compared to any other D-men in our league at that time, he stood out. He’s always been that talented. He’s always been that guy that’s had high expectations and he’s meeting them right now,” Edmundson said.

After more than a half a decade in Toronto, Rielly is back to being the star he was in junior.

For that, his modesty ought to turn into pride.

“I never imagined this,” Rielly said. “I think I have been able to reflect on it now, but when you’re a young guy, you’re a prospect who is supposed to be good, and the older guys used to make jokes about me playing in the NHL one day and I kind of dismissed them because at the time you’re not there yet, you don’t think it’s realistic.

“The injury made it tough to think about where we’re at now, but man, those were fun times.”

He thinks about his time in Moose Jaw and credits his teammates for turning him into the player and person he has become.

He remembers that first Christmas break visit with Hamonic and the Wattersons. He still keeps in touch with Millar, O’Leary and all of the “really good friends” he made along the way.

“Just the relationships that we were able to build, a lot of characters,” he said, with a laugh. “We all had a lot in common. It’s strange. It really was a unique group. We all got along. We spent a lot of time with one another.”

There are a lot of Leafs games on TV in the Watterson home these days. At the end of February, Rielly welcomed the Wattersons to Toronto for a pair of games against the Canadiens and the Capitals and took them out to dinner.

“Everyone else sees a star player, but I have to admit I still just see Morgan,” Watterson said. “Even though I’m well aware of what he has accomplished on the ice, it’s a far second to just missing him as a person.”

In that moment, his journey came full circle. It was special. But he’s still not quite ready to fully give himself full credit.

“I was lucky enough to have one of the best billet families in junior hockey. They really had an impact on me, so I feel very lucky to have had that,” Rielly said. “That’s what makes the experience that much better.”

But as another season wraps up, Rielly has a coach who is happy to give him the credit. Mike Babcock, like everyone before him, says you must understand where Rielly started — and who Rielly is — to understand the season he has had.

“You’ve got to go back a number of years. He was a real high-end player drafted, you come to the National Hockey League, everyone expects you to be good right away. As a defenceman in the National Hockey League, to be good defensively right away, you don’t see it very often,” Babcock said.

“And so it has taken him some time. He’s had a great year for us. He’s a big part of our team with his energy, his preparation, his professionalism, but obviously with his play.”

Soon, that play might result in a Norris Trophy nomination.

Just don’t expect Rielly to brag about it.

#morgan rielly #toronto maple leafs #nhl

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comicteaparty · 5 years ago

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November 13th-November 19th, 2019 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from November 13th, 2019 to November 19th, 2019. The chat focused on the following question:

When reading a new webcomic for the first time, what qualities are more likely to turn you into a long-term fan?

carcarchu

Definitely creativeness and how unique the overall concept is. If i think i can pretty much guess how the story is going to play out I'm less inclined to stick around and tune in every week (though i might queue up a bunch of chapters and binge it if i still like it enough). If a story keeps me on my toes and there's cliffhangers every chapter it makes me want to come back every week to find out what's going to happen next and that consistency makes me want to stay until the very end. Also i tend to read mostly romances so if i really like the ship that the comic is pushing i'm much more likely to keep reading it

Cronaj

For me, it's character development. While the art style or plot concept might draw me to read a comic initially, it is the characters that make me stay. If I feel like the characters have realistic enough motives or emotional journeys, I start to see them as real people. I cry with them, laugh with them, and mourn with them.

Batichi

I need to get a good idea of the 'hook' in the first 20 or so pages. I really need to know if the comic itself knows what it wants to do before it's really started. It can be through set up or character intros or world building like Chirault http://chirault.sevensmith.net/, or even a good random encounter like in Ghost Junk http://ghostjunksickness.com/ to get me into the action really fast, or starting In Media Res like O Sarilho http://sarilho.net/en/ . I need to know the creator knows where the story is going in some capacity or I'm worried the comic will quickly stagger into a hiatus. Technical parts can still be a bit wonky as I know from experience most creators need some practice, but I still need an idea they're getting to (without having to read the about page)

Most comics I've read that kept me going always seem to have really well thought out starting points that continue all the way till the end.

keii4ii

I look at how the narrative treats lawful characters. I usually have a hard time relating to chaotics, regardless of how well they're written (I may come to care about a chaotic character, but I'm gonna need something else to keep me reading until that happens). If the narrative portrays lawfuls as interesting and worthy of attention, and gives them compelling arcs that let them shine, yeah, that's probably my jam! Related to above though not the same: I love it when slow, quiet moments are given importance and handled well. (Related since quiet and lawful overlap?) Not just downtime so people can catch their emotional breath before the next set of busy scenes... but important enough to be seen as the focus of their own, if not of the story! This should show quite clearly in my own comic if I'm doing my job right...

keii4ii

Sombulus (http://sombulus.com/) by @Delphina is a notable example of treating lawful characters with respect, even though the comic as a whole has this wacky chaotic fun vibe. When I was first making my way through the archive, I greatly enjoyed the first adventure with townspeople turning into literal walking fruits, bread, etc. But then the trio went to talk to Tenge, and I was relieved that the narrative didn't "side with" the chaotic, irresponsible (though still 100% lovable -- I love you too, Astyr!!) main character. The comic managed to portray Tenge as being uptight without feeling unfair to me, a lawful. That is SO rare to see! (Sombulus as a whole does a great job at treating characters from the entire lawful-chaotic spectrum with both fairness and fondness. It is one of my favorite things about the comic. )

Delphina

(I saw I got pinged so I scrolled up to see what the question was, but I went too far and I thought you were saying Tenge was your favorite magical boy and I was dyiinnnggg @keii4ii )

keii4ii

(Tenge is totally my favorite magical boy too, now that you put it that way )

Delphina

Thank you! And thanks for the compliment on the lawful/chaotic dichotomy. Balancing how those kinds of personalities work together and how they're both strong in their own ways is really fun for me, and I'm glad it's showing in Sombulus!

DanitheCarutor

What can keep me reading depends on the comic. The hook can either be character interaction, the character's themselves, the setting, or the plot. With characters, how the they handle themselves and one another, how they think, how they talk, how they walk, how they DaNCe, how TheY LOVE! Lmao! But nah, I'm really big into character details, which individualizing characters to the extent that I like is rare in comics so I settle for standard stuff. As long as I can distinguish them, and they're interesting, I'm chill. Setting? A super fun thing for me, I love it when creators go batshit with their setting lore and world building. Of course even when the setting just pure aesthetic, when it comes to it being the hook for me as long as it's weird and crazy, something a little fantastical or cosmic I'm digging it! Plot. This is the one I least care about... as weird as that sounds. The story can be an insane mess as long as it's a fun and enjoyable mess, but when story does hook me it is usually an interesting, super intriguing take on a preused concept either with the use of visuals or writing. (Which every concept has been used, originality is technically dead) Some examples are: The Prometheite https://tapas.io/series/Prometheite - A sad Frankenstein story about a woman losing her partner to a fatal illness. Hookteeth https://tapas.io/series/Hookteeth - A lovecraftian/cosmic horror romance with merfolk. (Not much to say about this one, Lovecraftian stories in themselves are weird and awesome imo.) SUPERPOSE https://tapas.io/series/SUPERPOSE - A sci-fi comic heavy on character interaction, and looks to be something other than the usual in space, on a different planet, or a story where the sci-fi is just a setting. (To be honestly, I'm mostly into how the story is presented visually. It feels very theatrical.)

Sometimes I stick with a comic purely for the aesthetics, I'm a sucker for eye candy. LIke Seluda https://tapas.io/series/seluda - A normal-ass high school story, but the visual presentation is SOmething else! Very 60's-70's drug trip, the style of speech used by the MC is very surreal, if not a little long winded at times. I would chalk my interest in this comic up to characters and art, but mostly art.

keii4ii

Related: Astyr supplying the non-sequitur lines to keep that one machine going was also a favorite moment of mine. This is probably just me but I found it genuinely heartwarming to see him able to contribute simply by being his chaotic self, even without his magic. @Delphina

FeatherNotes

Honestly character design and a memorable interaction are easy hooks for me. I do like a good investment in world building however, it really helps for easy immersion and definitely makes it more enjoyable to read! The moment I see a creator indulge in some good backgrounds and lore, I'm pretty much sold! Phantomarine and o sarilho are really good examples of all those things http://www.phantomarine.com/ https://sarilho.net/en/

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I read a really wide variety of comics. I’m not sure I can pinpoint exactly what trait it is that hooks me, besides just ‘good writing’. I like comics that have believable, relatable characters, well thought-out plots, and good character development. I’m immediately turned away by heavy reliance on tropes, stale, cookie-cutter characters, or achingly slow progression. If it’s well written and well-paced, there’s a good chance I’ll stick around and keep reading. Also, a bit opposite of what Keiii was saying above- I love a good rogue. The better the chaotic character, the more likely I am to be drawn in. I love stories that explore the moral grey area, that have villains with good redemption arcs, and have heroes that are deeply flawed but grow and learn. If the hero is always 100% on the good side and the villain is always 100% on the bad side, I’m more likely to lose interest.(edited)

FeatherNotes

Ohh yes agreed on that

keii4ii

@Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios) I believe we may be looking at two sides of the same coin! I wouldn't be interested in reading about the Honorable and Immaculate Lawful Heroes Against The Forever Evil Baddies, either. Greyness -- or to describe it differently, "stories not picking a side" -- is something I like seeing as well, just through a more lawful lens. Back to the Sombulus example, it's one thing to portray a noble lawful hero. But Tenge was portrayed as being uptight, without making it feel like a jab at lawful readers. He has room for growth, but so does everyone else in the story. Reading Sombulus I feel like he can learn to become a happier person without becoming someone else. Lawful doesn't mean perfect nor boring, and that's something I really appreciate seeing.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

That’s very true! I like when lawful characters aren’t perfect, though I gravitate more towards chaos, lol.

keii4ii

(Tienar may not be my tippy top favorite Ashes character (not yet sure who my fave is!) but I am definitely partial to him and his lawfulness. )

Pakky

i love chaotic lawful characters. one of my favorite characters was from a long dead webcomic called destress where the main character was lawful but also psycho. it was pretty fun to watch

sssfrs

I dont read a lot of comics but I love loveable rogue characters

FeatherNotes

Love me those chaotic stupid types too My comic's main char is one of them and it definitely makes for interesting interactions!

sssfrs

I like the dynamic my characters have. The leader of the group is smart and responsible, the second in command is smart and kind of lazy, and everyone else is completely chaotic, evil, or stupid

So the leader is herding cats

Glowbat (Aloe)

I think what really grabs my attention and chains it to the radiator usually is when there's a noticeable overarching thesis or themes to the comic that the creator is mulling over via the story. Usually as a result it really tightens up the whole story and seeing characters of all kinds representing different stances on the thesis and acting in ways directly reflecting that is neat.

keii4ii

^ Cohesiveness!!!!

Glowbat (Aloe)

Yeah!

Cronaj

I think it's interesting how most of us are drawn in with character development, even if the specific types of characters we enjoy are different.

keii4ii

^ Yeah, I fully admit that just because a character is well written/believable, doesn't guarantee I'll be invested in that character. I definitely have my types, as well as a horribly narrow and specific taste range

Glowbat (Aloe)

also the other thing that really draws me in is if you put a hot character with pointy shark teeth in I will read the entire comic always

Cronaj

I think my taste range is pretty broad with the characters I like, narrow af in regards to art styles

It's a horrible affliction really

@Glowbat (Aloe) lol, do you read Castle Swimmer?

Glowbat (Aloe)

...maybe

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I think what hooks me, when I start reading new webcomics, is how diverse and interesting the cast is and I think I'm more likely to stay on a superficial level if not everyone is conventionally attrative. Other than that, strong character writing and strong motivations for the characters that are already there in the beginning.

Cronaj

Character development!

Deo101

Things that keep me around are like... If I can read it, honestly. Like if i can follow whats happening consistently then i can get into it. Also! Depending on how it treats women, lgbt people and disabled people really makes or breaks my overall enjoyment. I like character driven stories most but I can enjoy other things and get into them, its nit very consistent for me

All about clarity and respect

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Oh, yeah, the author respecting their characters and / or groups of people is a big must for me.

So I agree with Deo 100% on that

Deo101

Oh, and also how much they respect their readers and trust that i can follow things without holding my hand through it!

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

^^^that too! I am not a fan of over-explaining(edited)

Cronaj

I will say, the way female characters are portrayed does affect my overall enjoyment as well. For example, if a woman is so boring and placeholder (i.e. just there to help a man or be a romantic interest), as I like to call, suffering from "girl" syndrome, I really hate it. This is why I can't watch a lot of anime, because often the female characters don't matter.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Also, @keii4ii I think you may be the first person ever to say you like Tienar!

keii4ii

omg noooo Tienar I WILL ROOT FOR YOU, MY EAGLE

It's not that I agree with him a lot. I just really appreciate that he's there

Cronaj

But yeah, if a comic can't pass the simple Bechdel Test....

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Hahaha, well, he’s definitely There

keii4ii

Re: the balance of clarity vs not over-explaining, that can be tricky!!

I too don't like over-explaining, but what I find to be just clear enough may be unclear to some, or too confusing,

Deo101

Yep :// so that one is really not on the author so much as just "if I dont know what's up or if I feel its dragging on i wont like it"

Jts not the kind of thing that you can do right for everyone

keii4ii

Agreed

Deo101

What my indicators for "is this respectful?" "Is this clear?" Etc are gonna be wayyyy different from other people's so its hard to say exactly what keep me reading

keii4ii

This is actually something I've been thinking about a lot. For Korean webcomics, the comment section generates a lot of engagement, and one result is that reading comprehension becomes a group activity. Particularly observant comments become highest voted, so even less observant readers can follow along by reading the comic and the highest voted comments. I feel that makes some stories more accessible than they would've been without that comment section culture.

Deo101

I wish that were commonplace lol

keii4ii

ME TOO

Their comment section is active enough that one time, a reader asked for toilet paper (they were stuck in a public restroom stall at Incheon airport, and only had like 20 minutes before their flight) and they actually got TP in time

But yeah, it's not just the activity level that I'm envious of. It's the group effort reading comprehension

I value it as a reader (I am not the most observant), and want it as a creator

Deo101

Yeah wow that sounds awesome and would also help me SO MUCH because I struggle a lot with following things...

keii4ii

OMFG

Before reading the sentence to the end

Deo101

Remembering, knowing what's going on or who is talking, picking up on subtle hints... Can't do that lol

keii4ii

I thought you were going to say "because I struggle a lot with public restrooms with no TP" sorrryyyyy

Cronaj

Hahahaha

Same

Deo101

Hahahahhaha

I usually just ask whoever is next to me if that happens

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I wish western audiences were that engaged. Usually the top voted comments I see are either puns (fair, because puns are awesome) or thirsty (less nice, but if it’s a thirsty pun I admit to laughing out loud sometimes)(edited)

Deo101

Yeah same lee :/

I've been getting like .1% of my readers commenting and ive been like. Is my writing just not conducive to an interactive environment? This convo should probably move out of reader favorites. Creator babble it is! Lemme go over there w it

keii4ii

There was this thriller webcomic in which the MC was trying to assassinate 4 corrupt politicians for personal grudges. He already got three of them. The last one receives a large, round-shaped flower pot as a gift from his supporters. 3-4 weeks later (IRL I mean), it is revealed that the third target/victim was cut up into pieces, but they couldn't find his head. One reader pointed out "THE FLOWER POT!!!!!!" and I would not have been able to make that connection without that comment. I mean the flower pot thing was revealed the next update anyway, but it was nice to have that comment, and another highest voted comment even specificed "go to [this specific update] for the scene in which he receives the pot"

(The head was in the pot)

Deo101

Thats so fun

Cronaj

Oh my God... It's brilliant

DanitheCarutor

@Pakky221 Distress by Blankd, right? I loved reading that comic back in the day! It's sad that the comic got discontinued, but I have to say I'm enjoying the WIP work for the stuff the creator is working on now. Regarding the conversation about characters, I think I'm the niche person in the crowd. Unless the character themselves or the situation they're in is an obvious mouthpiece thing for someone venting their racism, sexism, homophobia, whatever political views, etc. I don't reeeeally care how characters are treated or used? I've always seen them as tools, even in childhood I was disillusioned about seeing them as real people, so it's hard for me to get emotionally invested in how the author treats them. I don't even care about my own characters outside of portraying their problems, personalities, and situations decently. Probably not a good mindset to have, and it'll probably dox me some points on the "good creator" scale, but it's just my thing I guess. Lol

Bland characters are a pain, though! If you can legit replace your character with a rock, and it would have the same impact or be a livelier option, then... that's kinda sad. (Unless your character has some kind of legit issues relating to appearing bland, or they're sort of the butt of a joke.)

Pakky

@DanitheCarutor o: i don't have any way to follow the creator. the blankd tumblr has been inactive for so long but i agree. Bland characters are my least favorite. There's a lot of comics out there that have some pretty plain main characters that are realllllly hard to relate to.

DanitheCarutor

Aah! Blankd's Twitter is still active, they're working on a game right now, and they've done a few -ahem- adult comics since stopping Distress. https://twitter.com/blankd_ec

Yeah, with bland characters I'd like to think the author is trying to make that type of Sue that anyone can put themselves in? But it ends up turning into the opposite because they're so dead on arrival that no one can relate.(edited)

snuffysam

kind of related to the idea of "i should have an idea of where the story is going at the start", but one other thing that keeps me reading is "the story gets there". like if the comic opens with an old man telling a young knight that she has to travel across the land and slay a dragon, cool! if i continue reading the comic for six months and they're still in the same conversation, i'm probably dropping it! like i get that comics update at different rates, but if you have like one page every two weeks you should probably make sure something interesting happens in the first 20 pages. and the sorts of comics i absolutely love are when, like, the stories actually move forward. like, if i can re-read a comic and feel nostalgia for the earlier scenes, that's how i really turn into a superfan.

Capitania do Azar

The group effort in this chat already pointed some very important points: that not all characters are conventionally attractive (tho I like that, it's not something that would make me stop reading if it were absent), well developed women and LGBT+ characters, and characters with strong motivations that are apparent, make sense in the context of the story and are known to us from the begining. That said, if the comic consistently treats me, as a reader, as if I were not very smart (by constantly overexplaining things, pointing again and again at the obvious, making me go through walls of text because world is more important than character and you need to read a bible to get through chapter 1), I'll probably not engage for too long. I gotta say that the visual style is also a very important factor. I am willing to look through what I consider to be minor issues (like small inconsistencies in drawing/scenario or characters being offmodel) for as long as it doesn't interfere with my immersion in the story. However, some visual styles are a big no-no for me, and I discover that I can't look past those and enjoy a story

Q @CecilieQMT making WAYFINDERS

This chat is very good - also for a first-time webcomic creator. As a reader, I'm almost a little ashamed to say that I'm very picky. Not because I don't like comics, because I LOVE COMICS, but becase I'm so goddamn busy all the time. Everything is constantly competing for attention, and for a comic to be able to hold that attention, it needs to be something extra special. For me, that's an engaging and developed visual style, a plot that gets going quickly, and a sense that the story has been planned. I love that so many different comics exist, I just can't read all of them and also be a creator.

RebelVampire

As a reader, I'm almost a little ashamed to say that I'm very picky. Not because I don't like comics, because I LOVE COMICS, but because I'm so goddamn busy all the time.

I think that's an important sentiment all creators should remember. People are busy. And like, not even just comic creators. I'm talking about basically everyone. Which means good and bad things. Bad thing is that it makes creating a highly competitive market because people are going to be super picky just for lack of time to be un-picky. But the good thing is it means the people who do choose to read your comic are picking it out of all the other comics that they could read with their limited time. And that right there is pretty special.

Cronaj

@RebelVampire That really is a beautiful sentiment.

@Q @CecilieQMT making WAYFINDERS I am also very picky about comics, which is part of the reason I'm so picky about my own work. This is why if an artist doesn't seem professional enough for me, I don't want to waste my time reading the comic, because maybe the writing is unprofessional too. I know I'm missing out on a lot of good content, but as you said, I don't have the time to read a comic and be disappointed when I'm further into it.

keii4ii

I too am picky about stuff, and it's not even because of quality. My tastes are a far bigger factor. Just because I don't read something doesn't mean I think it's bad!!

Cronaj

That is also true

Tastes also play a huge role into why I read or don't read something, not just the "quality" of the art

kayotics

I don’t think I’ve answered the question yet but I’ve been lurking. The first thing to grab me that might turn me into a long term fan is the art style. I don’t think the art is the most important factor but I need to be able to follow along, and if it’s not a style I’m interested in I probably won’t start it. The second thing is the writing in general. I like characters the most, more than world building. So interesting interactions are where I get the most enjoyment. The story could go almost anywhere but if I don’t like the main character I really won’t like the story. So the thing that will keep me going the most is a likeable main cast. And I don’t mean flawless, because that gets boring, but characters that I enjoy seeing fail, and then pick themselves back up again.

DanitheCarutor

So I slept in it and realized when I was talking about plot for my answer, it was actually themes... because I didn't talk about anything relating to plot. Lol shows how professional I am. With pickiness, is it weird that I'm more picky now that I'm jobless than when I was working fulltime? When I was pulling 10-11 hour work days I was literally a drifter, so they never had anything for me to do. I would find anything I could get my hands on to make the time go by faster, so I read as many webcomics as I could. Now I have all day to catch up drawing pages, trying to find a new job, helping my mom with chores, and doing obligatory family bs. I also want to try making some kind of revenue off my drawings/comic, so I've been trying to get in the groove of doing more things. (Which is difficult because pages take almost all my drawing time.) It's hard to find the time to sit down and read a comic now since staying productive is mandatory. Uuuh Tl;dr: I can empathize with being picky due to lack of time.

Q @CecilieQMT making WAYFINDERS

THat's the creator struggle, right? In creating, so much time is spent creating, that it can be hard to find time to consume

Q @CecilieQMT making WAYFINDERS

Ooh, yay!

Deo101

I think also as creators, we tend to have a hard time -if not an impossible one- seperating our work from what we read. I Know I tend to look at other things as a learning experience in some way, either thinking "how would i do this different?" Or "what about this can i apply to my work?" Which makes reading a different, more tiring experience

We may tend to* this might just be me i will admit

DanitheCarutor

@Q @CecilieQMT making WAYFINDERS It is! Sometimes I get so focused on the creating aspect that I forget to do all the other important things like advertising, socializing, promoting other people. Like playing video games, reading comics is an absolute luxury time waster so I don't do it as often as I could anymore.

Aw man! I do that too, Deo! Although it's something I actually enjoy? Something about analyzing a piece of media, and applying what you would do with it is fun.

Deo101

Oh I absolutely do enjoy it! But it takes more time and is draining for me

Cronaj

Definitely makes it harder to enjoy what we're reading

DanitheCarutor

Aauh yeah, that's true. Analyzing does take a lot of brain power and energy.

Deo101

Yeah :/ so to find a story i can really get immersed in is incredibly rare now...

Cronaj

I do this with books I read too(edited)

It's an awful habit

DanitheCarutor

Over analyzing everything is something I've been doing literally since childhood, so I'm used to it. My brain never shuts off unless I'm drawing.

Cronaj

I find myself wanting to rewrite other people's stories

Don't be like me

Deo101

I do it too and i think its just kind of how you think about things when you're a writer

DanitheCarutor

Pff oh no, I've done that too. Not so much now, but in elementary school whenever I watched a show or movie I hated, I would rewrite it.

Deo101

When you pick apart what you dont like or analyze what you do iy lets you apply those things to yiur own work. Its a valuable skill to have and i think its kind of automatic

Cronaj

Even my favorite authors of all time... I end up going back on a reread and wanting to change things that didn't work out so well

DanitheCarutor

It's a really good skill that not enough people have... at least my coworkers are pretty lacking in the critical thinking department. They say it's healthy to question, analyze, and long to improve.

Deo101

Some people are, and that's okay! Those are the people I hope are reading millennium ;)

Jk lol

DanitheCarutor

Lmao! Yeah, it's okay to be a person of simplicity, as long as they don't tell me the hyper-realistic Lion King remake is better than the original.

Deo101

Ahhahahahaha

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I analyse every format of story I consume automatically . Comics, books, movies, etc. I find that it doesn’t take me away from immersion, but it DOES take away my emotional investment. I’m enjoying the story plenty, but I’m less likely to feel attached to a character or be sad when they die. It’s a very rare story these days that will actually give me feelings over the fate of the characters.

FeatherNotes

I can totally see that too though, esp with the crazy amount of works being produced, you def have to do some curating in a sense to see where you will make that emotional investment too

DanitheCarutor

Aaah I get that with horror movies! Lol But in seriousness, I'm the same way for the most part. My immersion is perfectly intact (unless something stupid happens), but my care investment in characters does waver. Usually it's easier when the characters are really weird, and catch my eye, like the corpse man in Swiss Army Man. I got super invested for some reason when he learned how to walk, then when he died again because his friend wouldn't fart in front of him. But normally, nah I don't feel much, especially for death but my views on that are kinda skewed to begin with.(edited)

So I realize I'm really into surreal comedy, if a character can actually make me laugh I'm more invested in their wellbeing.

keii4ii

Analytical reading is great. Though I rarely find myself wanting to fix other people's stories. I have creative tunnel vision and genuinely have no desire to work on anything other than the OTP (One True Project)

Same goes to my own ideas really? I get ideas but auto-filter them out, as I have 0 desire to work on them.

Cronaj

You are blessed lol

Every five minutes, I'm sitting there trying to convince myself to work on ONLY ONE PROJECT AT A TIME.

"Oooh! That's a cool idea! I should E x P l O r E that!

kayotics

I try to not analyze shows or comics unless I REALLY love them or I find them boring and want to be interested in them. For example: I’ll analyze the hell out of Full Metal Alchemist because I ADORE it, but the analysis stage came much later after finishing the comic. If I’m not engaged with a series then I’ll analyze what would make me more interested. I hardly ever try to rewrite other people’s stories

Deo101

Yeah i dony try to rewrite its more of a "what about this didn't i like and how can i avoid doing that in my own work?"

FeatherNotes

ohhh yes agreed Deo

kayotics

Oh yeah definitely. I will sometimes think about that, but usually it’s if something is really bugging me

Deo101

Yeah I partly do it because people sometimes just don't take "idk i didnt really like it" for an answer and I gotta explain. Also its kinda like a puzzle and I like puzzles

kayotics

Oh, on the topic of the question: one other thing that will hook me is whether or not the writing is exciting. For example, I mentioned being bored by some comics, but that doesn’t mean I’m looking for action all the time. What I’m looking for is for there to be something to latch on to. The most mundane story about laundry could be interesting to me if it’s written in a way that engages me.

A really good example of engaging writing in a mundane story is probably Sakana? https://www.sakana-comic.com/ The characters just. Work in a fish stall. But the story holds my interest even in the quiet moments because it’s crafted in a way that keeps developing the characters.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I can’t turn off my analysis mode. It just happens as I’m watching / reading in the background of my brain and there’s no control switch. Sometimes I wish there was so I don’t correctly predict the ending 1/4 of the way through and spoil it for myself. (I’m no longer allowed to make predictions along with my friends when we watch movies together).

Deo101

^^^^ SAME. BIG SAME.

My mom and sister are like that too so we all guess the ending and my dad gets lile >:( I Kno youre right and it's ruined now >:((

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

But agreeing with the above, I don’t want to fix another person’s story. I’m just always asking ‘What made this scene so effective?’ and ‘what made this part not so effective?’. I also map writing patterns, formulas, and file away ‘tells’ in my head as I go.

Me and my friends all like to talk during movies: making snarky comments or predictions. I’m just no longer allowed to do the latter because I will ruin the ending. XD

Deo101

Ahahahahahaha

Yeah I can't go to theaters I've been shushed so much. But its so hard not to talk for me

FeatherNotes

that's a very important skill to have with analysing things to the point of deconstructing them in your own work and making more effective narratives too! it's good to be aware of the content that you consume and really understand what made the work speak/effect you the way it did. Honestly these conversations are much more enjoyable to have than just 'my fave character is that bc they are funny' and it ends there (no shade on simply enjoying things here tho! I def do the same) but yea! being aware to that degree is a good skill for writing

sssfrs

@Glowbat (Aloe) You should read my comc

I’m sorry I’m like this I’m just so focused on what I’m working on its the only thing in my whole brain right now.

You said you like stories with themes and my mind was like themes? my story has themes

keii4ii

Calm down man! XD Though I can relate to brain being 100% focused on your OTP (One True Project)

sssfrs

I love analyzing media. I get bored of reading or watching things really quickly if I feel like I’m starting to understand the central message. Or maybe bored isnt the right word- more like satiated? If the work is really cohesive and Ive gotten the overall message I feel like ive fully enjoyed the media and had a good time

Like analyzing it is enough and then reading is just bomus

bonus

I’m so sorry

FeatherNotes

it's okay to be really into your own work haha! love that passion to keep you going--!

also the OTP acronym is rly cute omg

sssfrs

One True Project I just realized you saidb that that is really cute

Like I said I stop reading if I feel like I have the gist of something(edited)

I think its cool that a lot of us are saying we analyze things all the way and were also making our own stuff like does working on making your own thing cause you to view the details of the construction of the story in a different way?

DanitheCarutor

Like, does being analytical make us construct our stories differently than others? If so I wouldn't say it does for myself, but my visuals tend to get way overly detailed. To the point where important stuff tends to get drowned out, which is something I've been trying to work on. <_<'

keii4ii

It would definitely help with self-editing/ revisions, for one thing.

I don't think you need to be analytical every time you consume a story, but it helps to be able to turn analytical mode on?

Deo101

yeah for me its kind of always on unfortunately. if not when im watching then definitely after having finished

DanitheCarutor

Yeah, turning it off is near impossible. Ah thinking about it, I guess being overly-analytical kiiinda affects my story? (If that's what sssfrs meant) I remember some readers who've said they go back and forth to connect plot details, and the guy who does Webcomic Relief did a super small review where he went nuts analyzing everything. Even down to the reason behind my use of medium. Since I like analyzing I guess I subconsciously made a comic that can be analyzed, or something. Or maybe it's not actually that deep.

keii4ii

That makes sense, though. That we make comics that can be enjoyed the way we enjoy other stories.

I'm not much of a theorizer, so my comic isn't really optimized for theorizing. Though some people have still managed to come up with really cool theories!

DanitheCarutor

Pff I think every piece of media has those theorizers, it's just fun to do for some no matter if they're analyzing some deep piece or Blues Clues. I imagine those types of fans are fun to watch as a creator whether your work is geared for analysis or not.

Oh uh, I forgot to mention. Let me know if I'm getting a little out there, or getting off topic too much. Socializing properly is still something I'm trying to work on, along with the etiquette.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yeah, I can’t turn off analysis mode either. It’s always running in the background.

sssfrs

I was saying more the other way around, like having experienced the process of creating a story, you think more about the work that goes into it and how the various pieces all come together in a different way than someone who's only ever consumed media linearly would be used to seeing it.

It could go the other way around too though that's interesting, then it's like "what drives people to make stories"?

RebelVampire

For me, there are three qualities that usually hook me in with a new comic. 1) An interesting premise. Not to say I think premises need to be unique, but it's more of a question is do I think it'll explore the premise in an interesting way. For an example, Maiden of the Machine https://maidenmachine.com/ It's not like steampunk is new or anything, but I really wound up liking the premise of it both being a romance and about high society politics with the steampunk setting. So, that drew me in a lot to keep reading. 2) A good balance of themes and story. I'm not a huge fan of comics that are more interested in exploring their themes over their story. I prefer stories where the narrative is the focus, and the theme feels like a natural consequence of the narrative. My example for this is actually the recent Week Long Bookclub comic Missing Pieces https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/missing-pieces/list?title_no=192867 I actually wasn't sure I was going to like it first, but I was super hooked once I started. There were lots of interesting themes to explore around death and revenge, but at the end, the story let me decide how to feel and focused on the narrative. 3) Theory-fodder stories. If there is lots of stuff to theorize about and that is easy to overanalyze based on the most miniscule of evidence, I'm pretty sold. This is the fact that really got me with Galebound http://www.galebound.com/ There were so many small hints and tidbits, both in the story and supplemental material, that I overread and overthought the heck out of this comic. I do wanna note, the things I look for and what hook me are arbitrary and based only on my personal preferences. There are a crap ton of objectively great webcomics out there that I have no interest in reading as a long term fan. Not cause they're bad, they just don't have things I'd personally enjoy reading in terms of being part of the comic's fandom.

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #reader favorites #comic tea party #ctp

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doomonfilm · 6 years ago

Text

Thoughts : The Craft (1996)

The 1990s were an interesting time in movies, where teenage films still had edge and substance to them. A handful of actors and actresses were carving out names for themselves that, at the time, seemed like lasting ones, and the projects these particular actors got involved with piqued my interest. With a core group of actresses that I enjoyed, it was no surprise that I gravitated towards The Craft, and it is no surprise that I still enjoy the film to this day. With Halloween right around the corner, I figured I had to get in a movie about witches, and this one is my go to.

Sarah Bailey (Robin Tunney) is new to San Francisco, having just moved from Los Angeles with her father and stepmom. In an attempt to find a social circle at school, Sarah gravitates towards a group of outcast girls that most of the school have labelled as witches : the shy Bonnie (Neve Campbell), the assertive Nancy (Fairuza Balk), and the outgoing Rochelle (Rachel True). Almost instantly, Sarah also develops a crush on the most popular boy in the school, Chris (Skeet Ulrich). Unbeknownst to the group of girls, Sarah seems to have a supernatural ability already present in her, something immediately picked up on by Lirio (Assumpta Sema), the local bookstore owner that the girls harass while they explore their interest in witchcraft. The girls are excited, however, because Sarah potentially completes their coven, and the group immediately begins to experiment with spells. Much to their surprise, the spells begin to work, but at a great cost, as the girls begin to exhibit personality traits out of their normal range, including Bonnie’s sudden obsession with looks and Nancy’s obsession with power. Realizing that things are spiraling out of control, Sarah is forced to take actions in order to save her friends, and herself, from themselves.

Mixing the didactic, powerful nature of the Wiccan lifestyle with the brash, often overly emotional nature of high school works extremely well for this narrative, like Heathers with a mystical element thrown into the picture. Four young girls that are driven by what others think of them and a need to be respected (if not admired or feared) are the perfect catalyst for an ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ situation, as their lack of understanding the ramifications of what seem like simple choices and decisions to them quickly spiral out of control. In high school, most of us were not yet fully developed in terms of compassion towards our peers, even those that mock us, ridicule us or dislike us, so it’s easy to understand why, when gifted with great power, three of the four girls would choose minuscule goals in regards to the grand scheme of things, while one would go 180 degrees in the opposite direction by choosing to basically become a living deity. Like any good tale of the discovery of power, their choices eventually tear the group apart from the inside, forcing each of them to either come to grips with the bigger picture or suffer ultimate consequences.

For a movie of this type, it surprisingly embraces a comedic side that works quite well. Be it the lack of a filter that teenagers are blessed with, or simply the casting of actors and actresses that are aware and present enough in their characters to be able to add depth to their performances, the funny moments in the film are abundant without being distracting. This could be due in part to the writing as well, which is very well balanced between an informative reflection on the Wiccan lifestyle and an honest look at the 1990s high school experience, warts and all. The humor even manages to incorporate references to relevant films, such as the ‘bitches of Eastwick’ or ‘Stepford wives’ one-liners, immediately providing both laughs and context.

In terms of production value, the film is relatively standard issue. Momentary slight uses of special effects, usually reserved in their application, do work well, with the majority of the stunts and effects being implemented by practical means rather than created in post-production. The only thing that has really stood out in any sort of context other than positive to me, over the years, has been the soundtrack. As I’ve gotten older, and my knowledge of music has widened, I began to notice that the lion’s share of the soundtrack is made up of ambitious attempts at covers that don’t always quite hit the mark. Versions of Tomorrow Never Knows, How Soon is Now?, and Witches Song, while appropriate in context, ultimately serve as reminders for the greatness of the originals, which slightly derails focus on the film. The one exception, in my opinion, is Heather Nova’s cover of I Have the Touch used to close the film... maybe it’s because I used to sweep theaters to this closing credit song, and after 30 or 40 listens, it’s embedded in my head, but I do appreciate that version of that song more so than the other covers present in the film.

Robin Tunney is a good casting choice for lead, as she manages to subtly provide the range needed to cover aspects of shyness, slyness, revenge and regret in regards to her character’s arc. Fairuza Balk was born to play her role, bringing her authentic look and knowledge to the table in order to invoke (no pun intended) the spirit of a young power hungry Wiccan. Rachel True seems like an odd choice on paper, but her lightness and caring nature helps bring a sense of true humanity to the group. Neve Campbell does a good job of portraying the ugly duckling trope, fully owning her eventual transformation after selling a reserved, embarrassed nature during the first third of the film. Skeet Ulrich plays his role pretty much by the numbers, eventually becoming nothing more than a puppet to Tunney, while Nathaniel Marston and (especially) Breckin Meyer provide much needed comic relief in order to not make their group deplorable as well. Assumpta Sema and the air of mystery she provides play well in contrast to the young girls. Brief appearances by Cliff DeYoung and Christine Taylor (in possibly her only mean role of her career) also stand out.

The Craft doesn’t necessarily fall on the spooky spectrum, per se, but it is certainly a ‘guilty’ pleasure of mine with a ton of actresses and actors I’ve been a fan of even before the film came out. In my opinion, after not having seen it for many years, it still holds up overall, and may be worth checking out if you’re unfamiliar or curious.

#ChiefDoomsday #DOOMonFILM #AndrewFleming #TheCraft #RobinTunney #FairuzaBalk #NeveCampbell #RachelTrue #SkeetUlrich #CliffDeYoung #ChristineTaylor #BreckinMeyer #NathanielMarston #HelenShaver #AssumptaSema #WilliamNewman #BrendaStrong

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amodernpieceofglasswork · 3 years ago

Text

let's put things off

So I decided to let things sit and sit for a while.

The day before I was up before 7am, and I spend a couple of hours working on my sewn book. I managed to clean up a lot of the fabric that was lying around in the box. I think it is important to just do a bit each day.

Lately I find there is a pattern to my moods. To be honest, I think the past two days was pretty good and I felt a bit like my 'old self', whatever that meant. I was up very early, I had productive discussions with people, I cooked some lunch and dinner, and also got a little bit of my personal work done. And I also took a walk/run.

Yesterday was a very hot day, and the nights are not very good either. At one point I was sitting in my sweat. Usually in the late afternoons, I begin to feel bad about myself. Sometimes I hate how little I have done in the day, and I muck around a lot. I feel useless. I also feel bad about the way I look. I feel like overall, I can do better. I know that feelings are not facts, but those feelings are terrible to feel, as a sensation, anyway.

One of my favourite things about the past two days was sitting at the desk around 7am. It reminds me of a period earlier in the year where I got up really early just to complete some work. There was a moment of peace and quietness that I like about mornings and watching sunlight. I love mornings, and in contrast, evenings and nights have a tendency to bring out more awful feelings in me.

Yesterday I did a draft of how I would update my website. How to organise all the information and work. I really couldn't remember much that I did in the last couple months, which was so strange. I remember now why I update my site only once a year now. The distance helps a lot. And at the end of the year when the inevitable question comes up 'what have I got to show for the year', then doing up that list would make me feel better. I want to be able to show myself that I am Fine. I think at this age I want to be gravitate towards being less concerned about things and shit, and just cultivating a general sense of I Don't Really Care and I CAN Accept This. It's this constant need of caring more, and not settling for anything less, that makes me so fucking miserable with myself and I ask myself, why. Ok, maybe not so much of I don't really care, but pick lesser things to care about, or just learning to care and accept. Ok, maybe not so much of caring, but accepting. Accepting is the problem perhaps, I could care forever and not ever find a point to end - that ending is acceptance, and I Don't know if I will get there.

"happiness is synthetic" a forbes article. I fucking love that headline, of course FORBES would say that happiness is synthetic. I don't know. I am feeling like this is very true. I cackle cynically at that headline because I KNOW It is true but i also KNOW I can change this if I wanted to.

So I sometimes think back to that paul yore interview I posted a while ago. Something he said about how he had a lot of creative energy and that he has exhausted a medium, and how he has to look for another medium for the output of that energy. I Felt that. Mostly with regard to the way I cope with things, and when things are good, it is because my coping mechanisms are well oiled and functioning. I feel like this sounds very unhealthy and I wonder if life is just about phases of devising coping mechanisms and living through them. I think there is a much more eloquent way of saying that and I can't find a better way to say it. But the long and short of it is that. I think that things only work for as long as they needed to before they spoil or stop working. And then you have to look for a new way of doing things. You can look at it two ways I guess. That you start to fall in a pit because you ask yourself WHY Is it not working anymore (which is me, some phases, some moments at present), or you try to find something new (which is also me).

One thing that I did not expect to find myself enjoying was actually cutting up those drawn muslins. I feel like I cut myself loose of a certain stuck feeling, you know. and I feel like I keep showing that on instagram because it really makes me happy and fulfilled, which are emotions that I am struggling to feel about my own work.

I think that art-making is personal, and for my whole life, is my source of consistent coping mechanism, and like paul yore, I have exhausted a medium to a point and I start to look for something new. I wish that I had more eloquence to express this thought to other people when I was younger. But I also feel this is the type of shit that really hits you better when you get older. When I was a student/younger, I was insecure that I had no One thing to show and I had many varied interests. It is bad enough to the world that you were doing creative work and now you get slapped with an accusation that you have no concrete identity. What an insult lol.

I feel like this is something a lot of artists come to understand better (this idea of doing many things, doing 'crazier' work) if they had a chance to go abroad and study. i emphasise the term study because it means you have to live for a period in another country and not just being a tourist and soaking up things in a quickie. I didn't have that experience, but I lived vicariously through music and online spaces where I got to meet friends from other countries. I think if you can't afford (in time and/or money) you have to find a way to look things up. and even though it is easier now than ever, to look for such communities, the landscape is extremely dense and full of shit sometimes. for me this is a driving force to how i put up content online and why i choose to design my website as such. one of the things that really made me happy in recent months was the projects i did for FB. when the person I was working with reached out to me, she mentioned how much she enjoyed my website and I was so happy to hear it. I want to clarify that I have been making websites for years and years and I think to be acknowledged by a (more forward thinking company) in an era where people are like... who still goes to a website? it is really very flattering for me. i mean, yea in a way it is FB themselves that really propelled the change of this digital landscape. (i would argue that the platform is as good as the user tbh) when people complain about big companies, sometimes they have to look at its users first.

i just started to watch the kominsky method. alan arkin's character is a real mood. i like the humor of the show a lot. the trailer came up when I opened the app, and tbh i fucking hate a lot of shows on netflix. but in that few seconds of the trailer something about the dialogue just made me want to watch it immediately.

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maiji · 7 years ago

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While looking up Genji Monogatari papers and translations, I kept running into these reverse otome games (basically dating sims with genderbent versions of Genji’s lovers) and getting super amused. And then @atorier sent me more lol

As a comic artist and writer, I love seeing the different takes of these characters! It's really neat to consider how the character designers might have approached interpreting/translating their personalities and stories, the creative license they took with the historical clothing, and even which characters the team picked in order to create what they felt would be a well-rounded cast for the game experience within their budget.

My thoughts comparing the designs below. Bear in mind I've read Genji but haven't actually played any of these games - I'm commenting mainly on character origins and character design, and aesthetic appeal of the art for me personally.

The games are (this is also the order in which the comparison images appear)

Reverse Genji Romance by Genius, Inc., 2016 - this one’s available in English. I’ll refer to this as “Romance” for laziness/ease of typing.

Reversed Tale of Genji by Ciagram, 2017 - I’ll call this Ciagram

Genji Koi Emaki by Quinrose, 2015 - Koi Emaki

The Tale of Genji Reverse Love Song~ Love Messages by éterire, 2015 - Love Song

Thank you atorier for help with links and translations lol

Murasaki no Ue

Originally: Genji's true love. He basically raised her to be his perfect woman, but she still has a mind of her own (at least privately) when it comes to his bad woman-chasing habits. Heavily associated with the colour purple because of her name, which comes from Genji comparing her to a purple flower (her resemblance to Fujitsubo, who is associated with wisteria).

What I think: If it’s a Tale of Genji game, must be there in some fashion. Positioned as main or most prominent love interest and gets the big picture on the box. Design-wise, possibly the most approachably attractive of the love interest options. Heian period version of the super handsome boy next door, maybe childhood friend. Purple every freaking where.

Actual designs from Romance, Koi Emaki, Love Song:

Thoughts: Surprisingly the Ciagram game doesn't include Murasaki, but it does seem to actually focus more on the early parts of the story when Murasaki would technically be too young to be an actual love interest (if we care about accuracy), but most of my other boxes seem to be checked. I think with a character as well-known as this, you need to take an expected and safe approach. Love Song is the most “out there” interpretation, and the clothing gets a bit generically frilly (which fits the aesthetic of the other characters in the rest of this game, it seems, just not to my taste). Koi Emaki, aside from having “anime hair under cap” syndrome (which tends to give me cognitive dissonance, but I appreciate that it’s way easier to make characters look different than historically accurate hairstyles), has the closest to historical accuracy design. Romance’s take is the most interesting to me though, even if the giant beads are a bit much. It’s like a barrier. Like how are you supposed to get close to him without smacking into them?

Rokujo no Miyasukadori

Originally: High ranking and very elegant and refined older woman. She's the respected widow of a Crown Prince and one of Genji's first affairs. His disrespect of her reveals her dark aspect: her festering hatred and resentment cause her living spirit to subconsciously attack, harm and even kill some of Genji's other lovers.

What I think: Must include because this character has huge potential - can do drama and cool supernatural stuff in the story. Long haired older man. Elegant, sophisticated, regal, serious, but maybe has an unexpected side if you piss him off. Outfit should be faux imperial or something.

Actual designs from Romance, Ciagram, Koi Emaki, Love Song:

Thoughts: So interesting! Long silver/white hair is pretty typical older handsome dude + sexy and dangerous fare, so it's easy to see why Genius went with that. The fur treatment on the robes is also kind of cool, and I would honestly probably never have thought of doing a light colour palette for this character. Overall I find this design unexpected and rather inspired. The Ciagram version, in contrast, is much more sombre (the entire game has a much darker tone in the art) and somewhat sad - I do like it, and it might be more true to the original character, but I don’t know that I would've gone this route with this context because there are so many other characters that could take a similar treatment. Genji Koi Emaki and Reverse Love Song, again, start to bleed down the path of getting too frilly and fanciful for me. Koi Emaki’s gives an almost overly reserved or priestly effect with the elaborate braided hair and the plain white kariginu when surrounded by much more colourful characters. Also, I would’ve shied away from purple hair, because purple is such a prominent loaded colour association for so many other key characters. Aoi no Ue

Originally: Genji's first wife. The marriage was arranged - he was much younger than her, and everyone thought she'd go to the Heir Apparent (Suzaku Emperor) instead. She's very cold to him, but bears him a son, and he only realizes his love for her and his regret when she dies soon after.

What I think: Third character who should be included in a Tale of Genji game. Aoi rounds out a basic pool nicely with Murasaki and Rokujo in terms of offering a player relationship options with different dynamics. This design should convey Cool, arrogant, standoffish tsunderish maybe big brother like guy. That’s all I got.

Actual designs from Romance, Ciagram, Koi Emaki, Love Song:

Thoughts: I don't care much for the tsundere type of character, and Aoi isn’t that top of mind for me in the original story either, but I find the Romance design very striking. It's one of my favourites of all the character designs discussed here. I like the implementation of the colour palette a lot, I like the take on the kariginu, and the tassley things are cool. I can’t see much of the Ciagram design, but the hairstyle is a neat alternative take that doesn’t feel too out there/modern. I don’t have particular feelings about the Koi Emaki one, but the beauty mark under his eye (which you can’t see at this size) is a nice touch, I always forget about the option of incorporating things like that. The Love Song one I find a bit odd. The hair and the eyes actually convey the impression of a character that seems very gentle and soft. Doesn’t really seem to match the general associations one would have with this character. Yugao

Originally: A frail, pretty woman who was loved by Genji's friend/rival To no Chujo, she went into hiding when harassed by his wife. Genji notices her after she catches his attention by sending him a poem. They fall deeply in love without knowing each others’ actual identities, and they probably would have had a long relationship together, but she dies suddenly when Rokujo's spirit possesses her.

What I think: Mysterious dude. Looks quiet and gentle, unassuming. If we want a physically weak character, or a route needs to end with a tragic death, I’d make it his. Design needs to incorporate floral motif because of the significance of the flower to her symbolism.

Actual designs from Ciagram, Koi Emaki, Love Song:

Thoughts: Hmm. This is very interesting as we seem to have quite a departure in the designs, though they all have a relatively non-aggressive vibe, and they all incorporate a floral motif in a fairly subtle way, which is nice. I hands-down like the Ciagram version the most, though it’s mainly for reasons beyond how well the design actually works lol (it’s just the type of character I gravitate towards visually, not specific to the character in question hahaha. Also more tassley earring things! I wanna do designs with them now). Koi Emaki takes a shota character approach, not my thing but I understand why it would make sense with this character. The approach is more lighthearted/cheerful than I’d associate with a character this tragic. Love Song is... I dunno, I find it odd again. Characters with light hair tend to convey a kind of energy with their design because it makes them brighter and more visible, so it wouldn’t have been my immediate choice. Actually, if you showed me this design and Love Song’s Aoi design and asked me to guess who’s who, I would have guessed they were for the opposite character. While making this post I even kept doublechecking in case I had just pasted them into the wrong collage.

Akashi no Onkata

Originally: Humble, beautiful, immensely gifted lady with unconventional highly spiritual parents who live faaaar away from the imperial court. Genji meets and falls in love with her while he's in exile. She bears him a daughter who is fated to become Empress.

What I think: Modest, humble attire possibly reflecting long distance from fancy court life (both socially and travel-wise). Musical instrument is mandatory, or at the very least, great calligraphy and poetry skills.

Actual designs from Romance, Koi Emaki (I cropped it out but he’s holding a biwa/lute in the background), Love Song:

Thoughts: OK, they all fit in various degrees, but I personally don't really care for any of them lol. Romance’s' take is too cutesy (it does offer a version of humble and shy, but you can also do that without making a character look 12... visually I'm guessing they may have had him fill the type of role Yugao does in Genji Koi Emaki, the cuter shota-ish characters). Genji Koi Emaki's approach is visually interesting, but I find a bit too casual/laid back/frivolous in the tone it conveys, and makes me think more of a travelling minstrel. Reversal Love Song’s is maybe the closest to the non-image I had in my head, but the art style renders the eyes and expressions for all the characters in a manner that’s very aloof and extremely out of place for this character, and doesn't convey much distinction between characters. All that said, Akashi’s my favourite lady so more likely than not I'm probably disappointed because of my biased high expectations - aka. doesn't look like the kind of guy I would be interested in lmao (the approach of the Ciagram Yugao is what I would have hoped for)

Oborozukiyo

Originally: Would-have been consort to the Suzaku Emperor and sister of Genji’s nemesis the Kokiden Consort. Genji's drunk and messes around with her, they fall in love and continue their very risky affair. Word accidentally gets out, Genji is exiled, Oborozukiyo's standing is ruined.

What I think: Could also be mysterious, but a more forward/confident kind of mystery than Yugao. Stylish, very romantic, maybe playful. I don’t really have a clear picture for this character, but I’d start with nice wavy hair, a lunar motif and night incorporated somehow (maybe a darker colour palette).

Actual designs from Ciagram, Koi Emaki, Love Song:

Thoughts: This one’s especially intriguing to me because my mental image of this character wasn’t as strong as for many of the others, and I really had to think about it. I’m not that surprised that this is one of the most divergent designs. Since the relationship was Genji's most public scandal, it seems like some games have taken the opportunity to interpret her reversed character as coming off sexy and coy lol. Ciagram and Koi Emaki made him an older male character - I didn’t really think about that. Love Song makes him look fiery/cocky. All have dark clothing or a dark cloak. Interestingly, two games modify the name, dropping the beginning or the end so that he's just Oboro ("Misty/Hazy") or Tsukiyo ("Moon Night").

Fujitsubo no Miya

Originally: Young Consort and Empress to the Kiritsubo Emperor (Genji’s father) after Genji’s mother dies. She was Genji's first love. He has an affair with her and their child is the Reizei Emperor. She avoids his advances after that, and becomes a nun when the Kiritsubo Emperor dies. Murasaki is said to resemble her.

What I think: Whatever Murasaki looks like, like that. Only older. And a different shade of purple.

Actual designs from Romance, Ciagram, Koi Emaki:

Thoughts: Yep. Just not as purpley as I anticipated (maybe for the better). Can’t really compare the Ciagram one to anything - we do have purple, but the design doesn’t seem to have much embellishment, which is surprising considering the character’s backstory. I think Koi Emaki’s complements their Murasaki design very nicely, though feels more imposing than I would have thought for this character. Romance’s evokes their Murasaki design more subtly, which is really impressive; would have been nice to see more purple in it. Interesting that 2 of the games include him, and appears to be a non-playable character in both.

General thoughts/other stuff: I think the Genius game has the best balance of art and design, including some of the most interesting takes on Heian court attire without veering too much into “what is going on” generical fantasy-land. I also like the approach of the character designs of the Ciagram game, which have a more realistic/mature look and are darker (palette wise) in tone, more to my taste. Genji Koi Emaki also does a good job with the outfits, though I prefer the aesthetics of the previous two games mentioned. Reversal Love Song’s designs lean way more generic fantasy than I'd prefer for something of this nature. To no Chujo (Genji's best friend/rival) usually appears to be your genderbent lady friend/competitor, but interestingly enough, Love Song doesn't genderbend him and makes him a love interest. Ciagram's game includes Koremitsu (Genji's loyal retainer), also appearing in his original gender:

He was one of my favourite characters and I like his design here too, though this take on him is more casual and “fun buddy” than I would have gone.

Lots of ideas and good food for thought to take to my own character designs!

#tale of genji #genji monogatari #genderbending #character design #art thoughts

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anima-contritum · 7 years ago

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SMFDR magic!au headcanons

A/N: as promised, i give to you the smfdr boys featuring angsT. im currently still working on the fic so stay tuned y’all because i might do another hc post with other characters (; and as always, enjoy (and check out my girl @11wolfpup11 because she’s my co in this). sidenote: Luna Andre is my oc and is John Andre and Peggy Shippen Andre’s daughter. all ya need to know for now is shes a freckley, sassy cutey that will do anything for her fam and a-a-ron

Thomas:

Death Wizard

dis poor boy can kill or weaken any living thing with just the touch of his hand

hell, any part of him is almost toxic

and he hates it more than anything, I mean who wants to be friends with someone who can’t give hugs or even the smallest gestures without the fear of dying at his hand?

honestly, no one really fucks with him

most avoid him at all costs besides James, but sometimes that’s a good thing

he can also sometimes talk to spirits and the dead as his ability is often linked to the dark arts, but the ghosts and such have to be the ones to contact him first

it scared the shit out of him the first time it happened

one of the other students’ dead grandparents reached out to him in the middle of class and he flipped the fuck out

but he himself has yet to hear from his own parents...

sometimes other students call him the Grimm Reaper

This boy would give anything to have a new power

he tries hard not to use his powers because someone either gets hurt or ends up passing out in the middle of class

he shoves it all down but because he’s so damn powerful (one of the most powerful in the school) but it leaks out anyways

it usually just kills nearby plants in which James fixes

most times he wears a lot of thick clothing and black leather gloves to keep himself from hurting people

when he first found out what he could do, he accidentally killed his parents

no one mentions it unless they literally have a death wish

either way, he’s tried so hard to try and erase the power from his soul

he’s tried spells and potions and chants and even tried to sell his soul because, i mean, if he doesn’t have a soul then he wouldn’t have any magic as magic always originates within one’s soul

James didn’t let him out of his sights for weeks after that

Did i mention he loves attention and affection?

Tommy boy puts on this sort of ‘bad boy’ aura to push people away but deep down he just wants affection

he never shows it in public but when he and James are alone in their shared dorm room, he’ll let James put flowers in his poofy curls and rant about how much he hates how Professor Hewlett gets sidetracked so easily in class

he’ll make sassy remarks in class all the time just to get the attention

and most times, it’s hilarious

emphasis on most

but he still always has a soft spot for his best friend

My boy trusts James Madison more than anyone else

because of James’ counteracting power, the two sorta just fit

Thomas is able to take his gloves off around him and be comfortable, mostly in the setting of their dorm

it took him a while to be able to do that kind of stuff because for most of his life he didn’t touch anyone

but when James assured time after time Thomas’ powers don’t affect him, eventually he became more himself around James and allowed himself to be comfortable with touches and pretend he doesn’t feel his pulse quicken and his heart jump in his throat bc fuck he loves his Jemmy

Sometimes it’s not enough

there are some instances where Thomas looses himself in the pure amount of strength his power has and James has to be the one to pull him back

and despite James being equally as strong, it still weakens him

Thomas never forgets those times...

he’ll lock himself away from everyone, including James for days

it’s like his power surges in him, begging him to release darkness and death on every damn student

it’s hard to control it and it comes in big waves, usually in correspondence with his anger issues because

this poor boy gets mad pretty fast

but James is still always there for him

he defends Tom and protects him

through it all, it always seems like they were meant to be

James:

Life Wizard

can bring most things to life and heal wounds

although depending on what the thing is or what kind of wound depends on hard it is to actually resurrect or heal

he really likes to heal plants and can even spawn lil flowers and such

he’s honestly the cutest flower boy

if he passes a dying tree or wilting flower, he always stops and makes it the most lively, beautiful thing he mostly does it with what Thomas accidentally kills

he takes pride in it but sometimes his gift can be a burden

when he first discovered them he revived someone who was dead while he was at damn funeral

it was a shit show

The most puRE

he wears these round glasses and is the quiet type in classes

if he notices someone upset or nervous, he leaves them a flower on their desk as an anonymous person but everyone knows it’s him

he has his own garden in his dorm along a window on his side of the room and checks it over every morning

he knows how much Thomas tries to avoid his garden in fear of killing it but he trusts him to not do it intentionally

Thomas sometimes gives him skulls he finds in the woods that surrounds the school and James likes to fill them with flowers and put them in the garden

“That just takes away the intimidation purpose of it, Jemmy.”

“Shush, you love it.”

usually he can pick out the days Thomas will be moodier than usual and makes sure to put on his favorite show and give him all the love and affection he wants

and yes, he loves putting flowers - usually violets - in Tom’s hair

his favorite flower type to grow are blossoming flowers because he likes the way they just bloom

Even though he pure, he fierce

don’t let appearance fool you

he may be a smol cute little guy but when it comes to people talking crap about Jefferson or shutting down his own brilliant ideas and works, he will throw down

there was this one time he “accidentally” had a giant vine wrap around another student, hanging him on a ceiling fan

he’s very methodical and cold in his fierceness but combined with Thomas’ brutality and kill-first-ask-questions-later attitude they’re kinda known as people to never get on the bad side of

Aaron:

Shadow Wizard

this bean can control or manipulate shadows and darkness to his will

in some ways he can even travel through shadows but he has to envision just exactly where he want to go and its kinda complex

but he can also use his power as a dark art even though he doesn’t prefer to do that

he mostly uses his powers to create shadow puppets and mimics that are mindless, dark creatures that are harmless and normally gentle that he can control (though he prefers not to most times)

everyone’s a little bit intimidated by him though because of his mysteriousness and just... dark aura

He loves his shadow puppets

he summons them to help with simple tasks or for company

sometimes, he sings with them for his own entertainment

it helps to avoid his loneliness

(Shadows: we dream of a brand new start, Burr: but we dream in the dark for the most part)

or he sometimes uses them to eavesdrop and sneak around because why not?

his favorite ones looks like a raven that perches on his shoulder as he does his work

Not the most social person but loves the hecc outta his friends

Aaron generally has two main friends - Luna Andre and Theodosia Prevost

Luna and him have been best friends since the very beginning, instantly connecting. they both came to Flilria around the same time so it was easy to gravitate towards each other in terms of cluelessness and such

before he met Theo, Luna was basically all he had as he was an orphan even before he knew of his magic

but Luna’s family kinda adopted him almost since Burr and Luna were so close they had become like siblings

but despite that, she’s kind of a bad influence mischief wise

even so, they both hate bringing attention to themselves and often to try to stay as neutral as possible in the eye of the public, but they share their true opinions to each other in private

overall, they’re hella close sometimes too close

Luna was the one to introduce Theo to Aaron and they all are a cool friend group

even though poor Luna is a third wheel

Ah, yes. young love ft. competition

Burr always makes it his goal to be at the top of the class

and Theo just happened to be his top competition

before he met her, he hated her because she always made it so hard to keep up and maintain the number 1 title

they would always glare and tease each other when they made eye contact in the halls or in shared classes

but once Luna formally introduced Theo to him and they set aside their little competition, they really clicked

Aaron had never felt more alive when he talked to Theo

it’s all very domestic and private since they both hated the notion of PDA

#jeffmads #aaron burr #thomas jefferson #james madison #oc #Headcanon #hamilton #hamiltrash #i tried #magic!au #fantasy #magic

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aceprosecuties · 7 years ago

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Okay, so I am still hesitant about writing/posting this, but I find that it is important based on my breakdown the other day and my desire for something like that to not happen so suddenly again. Basically I am going to go through some of my viewpoints on fandom and this website and all that.

If you would like to unfollow or block me after reading this, then that is your choice (if you read it at all…it’s quite long). I ask that you do not debate me or argue with me on anything I’m about to say, simply because I am exhausted and am not in the mood to do it. (Also I tend to not trust most ‘debates’ on this website because they quickly devolve into nastiness.)

My philosophy on fandom is very “Old Fandom,” if I had to describe it using a short phrase. In other words, I am very much against policing or censoring fictional content, because in the end, it is fictional. While “fiction affects reality” is a popular gotcha phrase here, it usually does not affect reality in the way that people claim it does. It is not really a “monkey see, monkey do” situation. If that was the case, people who play violent video games, for example, would almost always be violent people. That argument was brought up when I was a child and a lot of people considered it ludicrous.

That’s not my saying that fiction can’t affect reality or doesn’t; usually it involves affecting our emotions more than anything. While things like Hollywood movies and series can have a larger impact, fandom is…small. It seems large, but it really isn’t in the grand scheme of things. The impact one person’s fanfiction can have on the world at large, whether for good or for bad, is limited at best.

Essentially what I am saying is that things are grey. Middle grounds exist that many on this website refuse to acknowledge; living in such a black-and-white world is, in my opinion, very dangerous. It makes it so that people – who are convinced they are morally pure and therefore superior – are able to justify doing things like suicide baiting and harassment. If you’re convinced that your crusade is completely morally just, then anyone standing in its way is a dirty sinner and must be punished.

The need to be morally pure might stem from self-hatred. It is a form of perfectionism, honestly. Perhaps people are convinced that they’ll be more of a “perfect” person if they only consume things that have been deemed righteous by a mob of random internet users on this or other websites. I don’t know. I’m not a psychologist, so perhaps I am guessing.

People are shades of grey. (Most people, anyway. I would never argue that there is no such thing as evil in this world, but most people we will interact with on a daily basis are grey.) We try overall to be better, but we as human beings are not perfect and never will be perfect. We might say the wrong thing or get angry with someone for something that was inconsequential or might even have a belief that is grounded in incorrect facts or upsets others. The point of humanity is to grow, however. Maybe you will learn from your mistakes; maybe that opinion you held that was upsetting to others transforms into something else because of things you learned over time.

We all have people we like and dislike. We all have personalities and opinions we are drawn to and stay away from. But the declaration of someone as evil based on what essentially amounts to very little is…troublesome. (Note: ‘Very little’ does not include political views like nazism or the like. Those are not ‘very little,’ as they affect the real political world and therefore affect policy. That is not what I am referring to right now.)

What a person likes in fiction is oftentimes unattached to their real moral code, and declaring someone as evil or scum based on the themes they like is a highly dangerous way of thinking. It doesn’t allow people to explore the darkness in their own minds through writing or drawing. It doesn’t give them outlets that might be needed to help them escape their own world, which can be dark and depressing, really.

Personally, I am a fan of very dark themes in fiction (when people ask me what my favorite anime is, for example, I immediately say Hellsing Ultimate). Psychological torture, gore, dub-con/non-con, emotional manipulation and mental abuse, self-harm through physical acts or thoughts, etc. These things, while terrible in reality (and some of which I have suffered in reality) are just things I like to explore in fiction because I find them interesting or fascinating. Whenever I think about writing self-insert/reader fics (I have never done it, but I have thought about it), they are never…nice. They are rough and fucked up because that’s what I enjoy. I know that these types of themes are triggering to many people, which is why putting warnings on your work is important, and I believe wholeheartedly in doing that as a responsibility to your fellow fandom members.

The whole black-and-white mentality can also cause weird slippery slopes which end up with people claiming things as “problematic” and therefore “evil” that actually are not a huge problem. (I hate using this argument because most of the time I find that it isn’t entirely true, but in this case I’ve seen it happening more and more.)

I’ve seen people called pedophiles for shipping an 18 year old with a 16 year old (Otabek and Yuri P.), which is essentially the equivalent of a senior and a sophomore in high school dating. Not only does this cheapen the term pedophilia – making it oftentimes hard to recognize when someone is an actual child molester versus when someone just ships something “problematic” – but it also is just so far removed from what happens in real life, where teenagers date.

I’ve seen people called Nazis because they ship two villains and enjoy their dynamic and their individual characters (Kylo Ren and General Hux). Ignoring the fact that Nazism is not even a thing in the SW fictional universe, it also is saying that if you like these types of characters for whatever reason, then you are a bad person.

It is difficult for me to process that, since I always liked villains and anti-heroes the best. Saying that enjoying villains and their dynamics is basically condoning their actions in real life is infantilizing, in a way. It is basically assuming that I cannot differentiate between what is real and what is not.

Was I so evil and trash when I was around 10 or so? When I gravitated towards characters like Vegeta and Sephiroth? Yami Bakura and Darth Vader? If I’m terrible for liking them now, was I terrible for liking them back then, too? Would people call me an abuse apologist at 12 because I shipped Yami Bakura with Ryou?

I already have problems with perfectionism and self-hatred. The idea of standing across from a young me and telling her that she is a disgusting human being and a piece of trash because of the characters she identified with and liked or the characters she wanted to see kiss…it upsets me. Because I internalize it and wonder if it is true. Because if that is the case then I was born a broken person.

I’ve always had issues with depression. It just took until adulthood to recognize it. When I was young people asked me why I was angry a lot. I never really could answer them…I just was. My perfectionism (which started in elementary school brought on by extreme competitiveness) got so bad that in high school I cried and told myself I was a stupid piece of shit because I got an 88 on an AP Calculus test. If I did not get all As all the time I was not a worthy person. Hell, I was in the top 1% of my graduating class, and I was still somewhat upset because I was not valedictorian or salutatorian. (This was all internalized; other people were allowed to fail or mess up, but I was not allowed to.) I can’t even say that my parents or my family life brought this on. It didn’t. My parents were always very supportive. They would sit me down and ask if I did my best, and if I say yes, that is all that mattered. As long as I tried, it was okay to fall down.

My brain never really accepted that lesson.

It is frustrating. I have no reason really to be depressed and anxious (I guess aside from graduate school right now) and think of myself as terrible, but that is just my brain and it has been like that for a long time.

So now to have people screaming at me that I actually am that terrible person because of the fiction I choose to consume? It is…demoralizing.

…This has ended up way longer than I originally intended it to.

(Thanks to those who actually read the whole thing. Sorry if I rambled or anything like that.)

I sort of said this, but I do have a writscrib beta access key, so I will be setting up shop over there as well. I am wondering about leaving this place altogether if that takes off (and I’m hoping it will), but I’ll keep you guys updated on that front.

My semi-hiatus might turn into more of an actual hiatus, but we’ll see. I say that a lot, and then it doesn’t seem to happen.

#allie makes posts #this is v long #once again please do not debate me on things #I'm too tired to do that #I figured I would just write this so there would be no more surprises so to say #now people know my whole stance on this #and you can do as you please with this knowledge #this got personal

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emperorren · 7 years ago

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some thoughts by a long term multifandom-dwelling, meta-enthusiast shipper who has been countless times baited, disappointed, lied to, and kicked in the face by writers and showrunners backpedaling and boycotting their own narrative, taking impossibly stupid decisions, and being overall dumb as fuck:

“canon” is a non-entity. or at the very least a fluctuating notion, especially in the case of huge franchises (think of m*rvel). canon is incessantly rewritten, challenged, distorted, contradicted by new material. think of the ha n-leia romance, how it was a happily ever after at the end of the original trilogy. think of it now. there are old fans who utterly rejected the new trilogy as something essentially extraneous to the star wars story; for them, han and leia are still living their HEA, han is still alive, ben solo was never born, and nothing bad happened. This remains true for them as long as they ignore the new material, whose canon validity is disputable, if you’re a “purist”. These characters aren’t real, they are the product of someone’s imagination, and literally the only thing that separates your canon from THE canon is that the latter is imagined by someone who happens to be in charge of the commercial version of story. When none of this is real, several things can be true at the same time.

i’ve come to terms with the fact that shipping as we intend it doesn’t operate on the same level of mainstream storytelling. Mainstream storytelling is usually black/white and pretty straightforward; shipping exists in the margins and between the lines. For most mainstream writers, “romance” has a very narrow meaning. Very specific stuff has to happen to create “romance” (kisses, sex, googly eyes. “I love you” “I know”). Shipping doesn’t need those things. The shipper gaze is inherently transformative. The real essence of shipping is taking things that aren’t intended to be romantic, and RUNNING WITH IT, changing them, developing them, making them romantic in a way that the wider audience wouldn’t understand, or wouldn’t have the patience to follow in depth.

this is why we saw things as the interrogation and the duel and our brain wheels were immediately set in motion to come up with a million exciting scenarios. If we had seen a romance unequivocally blossoming between these characters, most of us (me included) wouldn’t be so drawn to this pairing.

some of us don’t even like mainstream romance. When people are like “huh, why do you ship this crack pairing instead of the canon one?”, well, this is the reason. Some of us feel a sort of disconnection from standard romantic narratives (and that’s because they are usually written by straight, cis, male writers, and designed to appeal to a generic and primarily straight, cis, male fanbase with little imagination. star wars, I’m afraid, makes no exception.)

because of the above, and because the perception of what qualifies as romantic is deeply subjective, it makes even less sense to talk about “canon romance”.

I can see two characters holding each other’s gaze for 10 seconds as more romantic than two characters having a long make out session. I can hear a “forgive me, rey” uttered in a mouthful of blood at the end of ix and read it as more romantic than a kiss. Get what I mean?

Lots of us, however, care for those kisses and for an explicit validation. It’s okay, of course. It’s completely okay and natural to want that to happen.

but, again, experience has taught me not to pin all my hopes on THAT. Thing is, the canon story isn’t under our control. It just isn’t. It’s in the hands of a bunch of professional writers we don’t know personally, who do this as a job, who might or might not be emotionally invested in the story they’re telling, who’ll move on new projects as soon as they wrap up this one, and who - i repeat - approach this stuff with a professional attitude (whether they’re good at it or not, it’s another issue), not an emotional one.

what is under our control is how we handle our fandom experience. The ship is ours, and we make what we want with it. Fanart, fanfiction, meta, headcanons. They gave us the basic bricks, we create the building. None of this is less valid than what happens in Rian Johnson’s or Colin Trevorrow’s head. They just happen to have a higher budget. At the end of the day, though, they’re creating a huge toy machine that we’re going to use as we like.

the biggest ships EVER, the real fandom behemoths, are usually the ships that “never happened”. Why? because no male writer ruined them because their stories were not completed, and it’s a natural human instinct to want to complete a story. Which means fandom tends to gravitate, by default, towards those pairings that weren’t given closure, or were treated unfairly, or had a lot of sexual tension but no resolution in canon.

I see a lot of (understandable) anxiety over what I’ll call “the j*hnlock fiasco* and LET ME TELL YOU ONE THING:

YES, the TJLC turned out to be a bunch of crap, but in the end, who ended up living in the same house, taking care of a child, and being FOREVER BROS? As someone who witnessed the whole thing from the sidelines, with no dog in this fight, I have zero doubt that Sh*rlock/Watson is, has always been, and was confirmed to be the central relationship of that show, and of that verse in general. The conspiracy theorists fooled themselves (and caused a lot of harm to both their followers, and those who disagreed), because they made it unnecessarily complicated, and pinned their whole understanding of “canon” on something very specific that they were repeatedly told wouldn’t happen. but regular shippers? I know a couple, and they were satisfied with what they got. (frankly, I loved the ending of Sh*rlock, because it left things open for EVERY shipper. I would LOVE for SW to pull a number like that. I wouldn’t feel cheated, at all.)

meta is great. as i said, I’m a meta enthusiast. But please remember that even the greatest meta is nothing but an attempt to make sense of things that remain largely outside of our purview, with limited information, no access to what is in the making, and no confirmation that the writers are actually as competent as said meta needs them to be. Enjoy the speculation. Don’t marry yourself to one. Be a speculation whore. No commitment, no regrets. Worst case scenario, it’ll be excellent fanfiction fodder.

none of this is an admission that *re/ylo won’t happen in canon* or an encouragement to stop believing it will. This is simply my attitude towards shipping IN GENERAL, and—after countless disappointments—I though it might be helpful for others, too.

remember:

in december, we’ll see these assholes battling AGAIN, and being intense again, and we’ll be obsessing over inane details and speculating and dissecting microexpressions and shit EXACTLY LIKE WE’VE BEEN DOING SO FAR.

sure, a lot of these things we obsess over might be completely accidental (it’s always good to keep it in mind)—but that’s part of the fun, in fact, it’s the WHOLE POINT OF SHIPPING.

TO CLARIFY:

(because I’ve seen some bizarre interpretations of this post)

while the shipping fanbase might be predominantly female and/or queer, this isn’t a rule. Contrary to what some media outlets and popular forums believe, SHIPPING ISN’T A GENDERED ACTIVITY, and I, for one, am ENDLESSLY PISSED AND FRUSTRATED at the constant, blatant misogyny and gatekeeping with which shipping and fanfiction are treated in mainstream fandom circles. The shipping fanbase is an extremely diverse group, composed by anyone with a more transformative approach to fandom (which isn’t in an either/or relationship with the curative approach, mind), anyone who, for whatever reason, might feel dissatisfied with or underrepresented by mainstream narratives, especially the very simplistic ones we normally see in blockbusters. At no point this post wants to reinforce sexist assumptions about shipping and fanfiction as inherently *female*.

what I’m also NOT saying, is that we should just passively accept this divide between what we WANT to see and what mainstream fiction gives us; that we should just suck it up and stay in our lane. No, fam, I’m just presenting the way things (I think) are in blockbuster fiction, and saying that SW is (probably) no different in that respect. But we should definitely fight to change this status quo, and make demands for more diverse, inclusive, non-standardized romantic narratives.

#fanwank #shipping #**#sw negativity #/////#//////#romancegate

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alluring-skull · 7 years ago

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ancient scapes

I just got back from Seattle, after watching the Valve Dota 2 tournament The International all week. I don’t talk about it too much beyond random tweets while watching other events at work (and so on) but I’ve played the game for a super long time (albeit somewhat sporadically overall) and definitely have a lot of attachment to it. I wanted to talk about some of the things that have really appealed to me over time, what it’s been like watching the evolution of a game that’s been alive, changing and competitive for longer than almost any other i can think of, a bit about the big event itself, and hopefully some stuff that will give other people an appreciation for what it’s like seeing a game that’s so much the same yet so different from one i played so much as a teenager. This isn’t the most complete, knowledgeable (I really have no familiarity with the pro scene before TI1 in particular), or accurate history you can probably find, but it’s mine, and I hope some people enjoy it. With all that in mind this first post is background (I’m giving this topic...probably 3-4, at least. I have a lot to talk about.)

In 2000 or so a distant, much older cousin introduced my younger brother and I to Starcraft. I think that was about the last time I ever talked to him. (It was extremely unrelated, but I have no desire to return to Texas at any rate.) At some point, probably about a year later, we found a copy for like $10 at a Toys R Us and instantly bought it. We didn’t have a home internet connection that was really usable to play online at the time (dial-up...) so we mostly played single-player, both vs AI and the campaigns. (Brood War didn’t have a key, so we totally just burned a copy of the CD we got from the library.) I played a bit with the map editor, but I couldn’t think of anything interesting to do with it, and making Starcraft maps kinda sucked anyway because the kind of symmetry you have to work with is really limited anyway due to the isometric view.

When Warcraft 3 came out, my older brothers’ friends (I think...) convinced him to get it since he was in college at the time. He got really into it, and my other brother and I played some as well. Eventually he moved home and the expansion came out, so my other brother and I got to start playing a lot. I again messed with the map editor, though I didn’t have any programming experience to touch the more advanced parts. I loved all the terrain construction and deforming (I was a huge, huge fan of Simcity 2000 and especially 3000 before this), but placing trees was kind of tedious and I never really finished anything still. Maybe if I’d had a better concept of “starting small” I could’ve gotten somewhere with things, but that took me a long time to learn. I’m saying this obviously not to be like “oh, I could’ve been Icefrog” (or even Guinsoo) but to emphasize how interesting the UMS map scene (”Use Map Settings,” the common Blizzard RTS community term to refer to these; now most people just use “mod”) was to me from the start.

DotA Allstars, as it was called during the 5.5x era when we started playing, was not the first map to use the general concept that’s become defined as its own genre, with a bunch of predecessors generally named things along the lines of “Aeon of Strife,” dating-I’ve heard, since I wasn’t around much on battle.net then, as I mentioned-back to Starcraft. (The name is a reference to the Starcraft backstory, I guess, so it’s not very hard to believe.) I did eventually find a couple, years later, and messed with them a bit, but the limitations of the design system in that game really don’t work well with the concept, even ignoring the maximalist design elements that are to some extent highlighted in dota’s enormous pool of heroes and items. (These elements are highlighted even more in the popular “Evolves” game type, where, for example, at some point in the game you lose a very good unit because it’s replaced with horrifically clumsy Protoss Dragoons, who have slightly better stats and extremely poor interactions with the engine’s pathing systems)

The newer AOS maps weren’t very good either, but the inherent leveling mechanic in Warcraft 3 made it a little easier to keep some semblance of consistent progression, and the amount of unit types you could set was much higher (I don’t know if there is a limit, but for Starcraft you can generally only create 1-2 different versions of any given unit, depending on if they have a “Hero” counterpart with a different name to tweak). Broadly speaking, most custom maps focused on hero play fell into what I can only describe as the “tome trap,” where you could buy items (consumable tomes) which didn’t take inventory space and permanently buffed stats. There’s three kinds of heroes in Warcraft, correlating roughly to the “Warrior Rogue Mage” thing, and each benefits most from a specific stat. That stat increases attack damage, and each stat has benefits for all heroes as well, with Strength giving health, Agility giving armor and attack speed, and Intellect giving extra mana pool and regeneration. But spells have cooldowns, so the tome items quickly become relatively useless for Int heroes, while Str heroes see slightly better scaling. But Agility gives attack damage and speed to Agility heroes, creating a compounding effect that becomes increasingly absurd the more you feed into it. Although, it did cause the animations to break in all sorts of hilarious ways, with certain breakpoints making the attack animations stop altogether or even go in reverse, so I still consider that a huge plus.

There was a bigger issue with pretty much all maps, due to the way that the map editor exported maps in a format that was, essentially, open-source. It was therefore very easy for people to make small tweaks to a map which would specifically benefit a certain player spot or character, save it under the same name, then host a rigged version of the game for other players. (There were a couple ways to tell if this was probably what was happening, but even so, it made looking for games very frustrating.) As it turned out, there was a workaround for this, by which you could make the editor unable to read the customized script data. The map still worked in game, but other players wouldn’t be able to make slightly altered copies; they would lose all of that code by trying to tweak anything and save a new version of the file. Essentially, it was copy-protection, and few mapmakers used it, probably since most AOS games, Tower Defense maps, and other styles didn’t really use any sophisticated scripting anyway.

Dota Allstars used the copy protection, though it had had relatively few unique abilities at the time we began playing it (I was familiar with another map with far more custom effects, Elil’s “Vale of Nightmares”). Perhaps the most well-known was the Crystal Maiden’s “Freezing Field” ultimate ability, still represented in the game to this day. But most characters simply had weird mixtures of default Warcraft 3 abilities, tweaked with different stats and so on, and strangely, the most egregious example of all (the Brewmaster, who pretty much just had the original Pandaren Brewmaster abilities from the game’s regular RTS mode) still just has the same stuff as ever. I think it’s fair to say that Allstars was never the most original game, and some things that have survived to this day (Lina Inverse is still called Lina!! What is that???) are still incredibly obvious ripoffs of stuff from Blizzard games, other video games, and anime. I understand the “Allstars” name came from this version being a patchwork of characters from different maps, though I’m not sure how true that is. It might explain some of the worst 5.5 era heroes, like “God” (a nigh-unkillable wisp with no offensive skills, who was removed for .52 and has never returned), and “Conjurer” (an outrageously busted magician on a horse, who could push to win the game in as little as 20 minutes with chain-stunning golems, even in a era where player micro was relatively poor), but it became very difficult to find other AoS type games at all once 5.52 and 5.54 locked in as extremely popular maps across the server. Both enjoyed popularity at once, as I recall; it seemed many people simply preferred one or the other and would gravitate toward that choice, making both open all the time. But the release of 5.55 was a huge paradigm shift, with complete overhauls for many heroes and numerous bug fixes and tweaks. Its release signaled the future of the game, in a sense.

Well, I don’t know. That might be giving too much credit to a version of the game which, as I recall, was the newest for approximately one hour.

(Part 2)

(Part 3)

(Part 4)

#dota 2 #valve #defense of the ancients #warcraft 3 #starcraft

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okay-lets-not-panic · 7 years ago

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I am writing this in an attempt to make sense of, or rationalise if you like, the mess that the Kings have made of Diane and Kurt. I spent the better part of a year filled with rage about the way the end of The Good Wife left the characters but when The Good Fight was announced I decided to withhold my judgement, for the most part, and see what the writers were going to do. Well, I’ve now seen the first season and had a few weeks to think about it and I can’t say I’m entirely happy. That’s not to say there weren’t things that I loved, because it’s Diane and Kurt we’re talking about; even with horrendous and unfathomable writing decisions the characters and relationship are still evocative. (Basically, if the end of TGW didn’t destroy them for me, then I think they’re probably untouchable.) However, since I believe that they deserve better than what’s been written for them thus far on TGF I felt I had to write something, a rant perhaps, whatever ‘this’ is, to try and understand exactly what the problems I’m having with the relationship are. I can see though, that for some people the events of TGF could have been a balm to the serious wounding McHart shippers suffered in 2016, and so if anyone wants to avoid reading this because the ship is in a relatively good place right now and they don’t want to think about negative stuff anymore, I completely sympathise and understand. (Although I do talk about the good things too!)

I want to make clear though, that regardless of how things have played out on TGW or will in the future on TGF, I’m actually really grateful for this ship. They are so lovely to watch and I adore both characters intensely. So while I will have a bunch of negative things to say, I want to make sure that anyone who reads through this overlong and aimless post realises that whatever I end up saying, I really love Diane and Kurt and am grateful to the Kings for creating them.

Now to preface my (already) obvious bias upfront: before the last episode of TGW, I really thought Diane and Kurt were perfect. Just something about their contrasting personalities really clicked and felt right; his intensity and her poise; his stoicism and her mannered speech; country versus city; rustic versus elegant, Kurt’s willingness to throw his lot in with Diane relatively early on in their relationship while she was far less committal, and, oh yeah, liberal versus conservative. I almost forgot that last one, seriously. There’s just so much to point to and go ‘look how different they are’ but it never felt like these things would or could ever be a problem. That’s how right for each other they are. The political differences were like the sweet glace cherry on top of a gorgeous sundae: a grown up relationship for a grown up world. The inclusion of McHart was also one of the more feminist decisions in a show that was often touted for its feminist credentials. Gosh, it seems silly that this should be so but the fact of a mature woman at the top of her profession having a stable, drama-free but undeniably hot marriage is really fucking rare in fiction. I would love to have other examples pointed out to me but I really can’t think of many comparable fictional relationships.

The passionate certainty (which seems an odd phrase but it’s the best I can come up with) at the heart of their relationship, even from the earliest days, was one of the many things that made me fall so hard for them. So many ships I gravitate towards tend to be angsty couples with huge personal obstacles to overcome before the relationship can work, if it ever can; so McHart was a welcome change of pace. I had no doubts about them. Even from season one it was very hard for me to envision Diane with anyone else. Rewatching ‘Bang’ now makes me laugh because during their initial meeting they are so completely made for each other and it’s so obvious in retrospect, once the viewer is more familiar with the characters and how they interact, the way they act at this point is incredibly telling; Diane is hilariously unprofessional and off-kilter and Kurt not only puts up with it but he actually seems to enjoy this behaviour in a sort of bemused fashion even though despite his usual unflappability it clearly gets under his skin. Let’s not even mention the Sarah Palin picture in a frame thing and Kurt’s little ‘on the phone’ performance later in the episode because does anyone really think this falls anywhere on the spectrum of typical behaviour for him? Anyway, suffice to say – you can totally see them meeting ‘the one’. I know that the writers probably never intended any of this and the relationship actually grew organically from episode to episode but… I don’t know, maybe it’s just Christine and Gary’s impeccable chemistry at work but the longevity of McHart seems almost inevitable now. When they introduced Jack in season three I was genuinely confused because what was the point? Despite the fact that Kurt was hardly ever in the show, I couldn’t fathom the prospect that perhaps McHart wouldn’t be endgame. Diane and Kurt would assuredly end up together; this fact was never in doubt, even if Diane hadn’t quite worked it out at that point.

Sadly, it was this faith in the relationship that caused me to be so blindsided at the end of TGW. I have spent years stressing over other will they/won’t they ships on other shows but I barely had a moment of anxiety about McHart, because how could it ever end badly? Especially once they were married. After that point it made no logical sense from a character or overall plot point of view to break Diane and Kurt up. Once they’d finally, finally, got to the place where they were both emotionally ready to commit fully to one another, it would be totally unsatisfying to mess about with their relationship considering the kind of people they had always been depicted to be. Well boy, was I wrong! And it’s not even that I had any particular trust in the Kings as writers for that matter. I’ve been screwed over by the majority of shows I’ve watched at some point. Hell, I’m a Buffy fan. And I know that many people in the wake of TGW finale made comments about how the Kings are incapable of keeping an untarnished good and solid relationship on their shows, and looking back at TGW in retrospect, this is true, but you see because I wasn’t overly interested in the other relationships on the show I was never particularly affected when they got gutted, it was just unconnected passing drama to me and not part of a disturbing pattern. I obviously underestimated the writers desire to push cheap drama at the expense of well-drawn characters.

However, the cold truth is, the writers wrote the ending that they did and so now I have to make sense of canon and make it fit with my understanding of the McHart relationship. But I find that I just CAN’T! (Even with the added information from TGF.)

Now I realise that it is quite possible to point out various issues Diane and Kurt could have that they never properly dealt with. Obviously. But I don’t see how those issues translate into random infidelity. Of course, we can extrapolate that Kurt was unhappy that they didn’t spend more time together and maybe even that Diane had a tendency to prioritise work, especially after they were married. There’s more than enough textual evidence to make an informed guess about this. But couldn’t the writers have done something else with that idea? Okay, I get that it had been decided that Diane desperately needed to be left with nothing at the beginning of TGF (even though wrecking Diane’s personal life ended up being basically irrelevant to the setup of TGF in the end. I don’t see why she couldn’t be broke and jobless but with a support system at home; that would still be devastating for her? Anyway, I digress…) but even if they were dead set on splitting McHart up couldn’t they have used a more organic reason? Perhaps the fact that Diane’s ambition or professional life was driving a wedge between them; hell, they basically did that in season 7 anyway when she asked Kurt to compromise himself on the stand for her. They could have gone further with that, at least it would have been in character. Or they could have written about how difficult it is for two people as different and as set in their ways as Diane and Kurt to change their lives enough to accommodate another person on a full time basis. I mean, hesitation to commit because of other priorities was a factor throughout their entire first five years of knowing each other. It would make total sense that the issue didn’t just magically go away once they were married. Honestly, almost anything would have been better than the plot the writers went with. I would even have preferred Diane to have the affair (if the writers were so convinced one needed to happen) not because I think the idea is any more palatable or likely but because Kurt’s constancy was such an important part of his character. He made his feelings clear to Diane pretty early on in the show, he sort of asked her to marry him in ‘Silver Bullet’ for God’s sake, and when she shows up on his doorstep after a year in ‘Gloves Come Off’ he is… pretty happy about it I’d say, if taken aback. By that point he’s fully realised any relationship he has with Diane is going to be on her terms but he’s totally willing to go along with it because y’know… he loves her. And that feeling ain’t going away.

Of course, since it’s not like the writers spent much time developing his character maybe it was just presumptuous of me to draw these conclusions? And this is the crux of the problem for me; it’s not just that a relationship I liked got ruined by some leftfield infidelity (although that’s bad enough), it’s the fact that they had to basically assassinate Kurt’s character, as the audience understood him, to do it. For example, a decent part of the humour and tension in Diane and Kurt’s relationship came from Kurt’s friendships with his students and what Diane perceived this to mean. Which is all well and good when the truth is that the whole thing is totally innocent, because then the plot serves to highlight Diane’s insecurities even though we, and she, know that she should be above feeling like that and has no reason to anyway, and it also serves as an interesting character point for Kurt. Why are all his friends young women? It doesn’t have to be a negative thing. And I think it’s this that sticks in my craw most of all; it’s not only that they used his student relationships in the most lowbrow and predictable way possible (one of the few facts we actually knew about him keep in mind) but also simultaneously forced the older guy cheats on his wife with a younger woman story on us. It’s such a fucking cliché I could choke. I would hate that they did this to Kurt’s character enough on its own but honestly they did this to Diane too and just… WHY? On the most shallow level Diane is hot as fuck and smart as hell and basically WHAT? OMG I’m never going to stop being angry about this am I? Their story went from being really quite progressive to incredibly regressive in the span of one episode. One. I can still feel the emotional whiplash.

From the moment Kurt was introduced to us we were battered over the head with the fact that integrity is his defining feature. He will only testify on behalf of people he believes to be innocent. Whenever one of Kurt’s current or former students was brought up, the resolution was always that there was nothing dodgy going on. Diane directly asked him if he had slept with any of his students (or, at least, the ones she met in the bar) and he said no. He doesn’t lie or prevaricate on the stand, not even to protect himself. He agreed to help Alicia with a case because it was the right thing to do for the client despite the fact that Diane was unhappy about it. The only times we have ever seen him compromise himself then Diane was always the deciding factor; showing her the demonstration in ‘Running’ because of his feelings for her, and then later on, in season seven, agreeing to testify the way Diane wanted him to. (Interestingly enough, both of these incidents backfired on him spectacularly.)

Now, Kurt may only have been a supporting character of a supporting character on TGW but it still amounts to seven years worth of consistent characterisation down the drain for the writers to then say ‘oh actually he was a total hypocrite all along’. Because where does it end? If he lied once, then it’s feasible he lied a million times. And not only does this go for the affair itself but why did he not tell Diane about it immediately after it happened? Expecting me to believe that Kurt slept with Holly is almost beyond my comprehension but to then take it further and expect me to buy that he kept it a secret is just… madness. Keeping quiet about it is both completely out of character and really, really stupid; he knows Diane is whip-smart, it’s one of the reasons he fell for her after all, so why wouldn’t she be able to work it out? If we in hindsight say that Kurt was willing to lie on the stand when she asked because he was feeling guilty about the affair, then wouldn’t this be relatively apparent to his wife, if not at that moment then at some later point? He would realise this. He’s not an idiot. And not only was she bound to find out about it, considering the world in which these characters live and Diane’s position in it, there was always a strong possibility that it would happen in a really public horrific way. (Another reason I hate the writers btw is because Diane and Kurt had so many cute moments in court during their relationship and now that’s all tainted. And it also plays like a kind of nasty bizarro symmetry, considering the fact that Diane and Kurt’s relationship was initially outed in court when Kurt was testifying. I can’t even imagine deciding to write something that on the nose and crass.) I’m not saying that Kurt should have been expected to know that Alicia would be able to make the assumption of an affair having occurred and then stoop low enough to use that hunch in court, but I never got the impression that Kurt liked or trusted Alicia AT ALL. So again, I ask, why wouldn’t he consider this as a possibility? The only conclusions I am able to draw from this is that he’s either stupid (which we know he’s not) or callous, which is ridiculous because we know that he loves Diane. So… what am I supposed to think? Don’t the Kings realise what they’ve done? The affair plot completely undermines the entirety of Diane and Kurt’s relationship and by extension Diane herself somewhat. And considering they were planning a spinoff featuring Diane at the same point when they were writing the end of TGW, it seems insane that they would want to damage her character like this. Why did she marry him? Was she just wilfully blind to what he was really like? Did she not see it? Or was the affair supposed to be a random moment of weakness in reaction to a kind of emotional neglect and therefore more understandable (if still utterly ridiculous)? Wasn’t their attraction to each other based on the fact that despite their many ideological differences they each found many admirable qualities in the other person; Kurt’s Tea Party Republican schtick didn’t matter to Diane in the face of what a good and honourable man he was. Right? But if he doesn’t have his integrity then… what is the relationship based on? Sexual attraction? I don’t know. I genuinely can’t understand why the writers would want to throw it all away in the manner that they did. Was it really because of TGF? Or was it because by late season seven of TGW Diane and Kurt’s marriage was the only healthy and beautiful thing the show had left in it with any depth, and the Kings had run out of things to burn? If it’s the former, then it’s annoying, because as I’ve already pointed out, Diane’s situation in the TGF didn’t really require the sacrifice of her marriage. If it was the latter then I don’t know what to say other than TGW was ending and there was more than enough drama that could have been created around Alicia, who was the star of the show, without involving Diane. It’s not like the writers devoted that much time and energy to her in the last couple of seasons anyway and I think it was incredibly disrespectful to mess with Diane’s character just so the weird slap framework could play out. I genuinely believe that Diane would have been above all that shit anyway. I also think that if the writers had bothered to spend more time developing Diane’s character, and by extension Kurt, then maybe they would never have had to resort to such a poorly planned storyline in the first place. But obviously this was never going to happen on The Alicia Show.

Now, talk of character development leads me to the state of McHart in TGF. Look, part of me is just grateful they wrote Kurt into it, I was half-convinced that they were going to give Diane a clean romance slate for the new show. But now that they have actually allowed a situation where we could, and should, get some resolution to the affair storyline, they’ve basically done the exact opposite. Having said that, yes, I admit it: I loved seeing them together in ‘Inauguration’. I was ready for it but I wasn’t ready for it. Seeing him waiting outside her house, being almost unbearably Kurt-like, filled me with joy. (It’s a weird phenomenon but when I think about McHart in my general life, post TGW, it really stresses me out because of what was done to them, but then when I see them onscreen I can barely remember what bothered me so much; the way he looks at her, so intently, like he’s constantly trying to figure her out and the way Diane changes in Kurt’s presence, the way she emotionally opens up like a flower - they are just meant to be.) And while I knew the conversation they were about to have wouldn’t be particularly pleasant, in a lot of ways it felt okay, he was there for her, she kind of allowed him to be, she let herself be vulnerable with him despite everything. It was definitely better than many of the scenarios I had envisioned during the hiatus. The fact that she wanted Kurt to be the one to initiate divorce proceedings was a positive sign, clearly she wasn’t ready to let go of their marriage entirely despite her insistence that the relationship was over. I was interested in Kurt’s assertion that in his view he’d never left Diane and also his reaction when Diane pointed out that he had because of the affair with Holly. He actually seemed kind of… annoyed? I don’t know? Was he tired of having it thrown in his face? Does he think it’s an unreasonable thing for her to say at this juncture? Weird, because it’s really not, even if it did happen a year ago. Diane just seemed resigned and tired, and this could indicate that they’ve talked about the affair endlessly with constantly diminishing returns, but it’s more likely that it was a reaction to all the other bad things that had happened to her already that episode. We’re not told how often they’ve seen each other since the end of TGW, if they have at all, although the nature of their interactions in this episode suggests that they have at least spoken from time to time. It’s hard to tell though, they’ve always been able to fall seamlessly back into casual intimacy after a long time apart. Nor do we have any idea as to what the confrontation that they must have had after the scene in court back in TGW was like. Did she ask him why he did it? What did he say? Did he give her an explanation for anything? We don’t know because the writers chose to tell us exactly nothing. Kurt wasn’t exactly remorseful, but again, it’s been a year, he can’t make his whole life about a mistake he made. The problem is, since we haven’t seen these characters since ‘End’, the affair is fresh in the audience’s memory and it seems like we’re only getting half a story. I mean, if McHart is going to carry on being Diane’s primary romantic relationship in TGF then these are pretty important problems to be glossing over.

After this Diane and Kurt seemed to fall back into their old pattern; he reaches out to her, she gets swept up in it, and then she pulls back. Of course, it’s different now, she has an actual concrete reason to be hesitant with him. But they didn’t discuss it, of course! I’m not even saying this is out of character behaviour, but it is frustrating to watch.

Which leads me to ‘Chaos’, and this is where my problem actually lies. I know, I know, they reconciled; and it was lovely, and Diane was adorable in the hospital, and Kurt told her he loved her, and ‘Wild World’ played but… I’m sorry, the set up for the reconciliation irritated me. Juxtaposing Kurt’s ‘everyday heroism’ with Diane being morally compromised because of her job is pretty dreadful, especially if this incident is what leads to Diane deciding that she can now be with him again, in whatever capacity. For starters, I don’t see how Kurt rescuing a baby gets him off the hook for the affair; one has nothing to do with the other. We already know Kurt’s generally a decent guy (or at least we thought we did), this is not some shocking revelation. Or is the carjacking supposed to prove to us/Diane that Kurt really is a cowboy after all? Secondly, of course Diane has to make compromises as a lawyer, she’s been doing the job a long time, and therefore has probably come to terms with and found a way to compartmentalise most moral qualms she may have; I don’t see why Kurt putting himself in danger selflessly would make her feel bad about what she does. And thirdly, I can totally see why Kurt having to go to hospital and Diane not knowing the extent of his injuries would lead her to put the feelings she had for him in perspective; he may have betrayed her but she doesn’t want to lose him forever, obviously. However, was it necessary for the writers to artificially rush their reconciliation with this? They haven’t worked through anything as far as we know; Diane clearly still seems incredibly hesitant about moving forward with their relationship, she tells him he hurt her and he says ‘it won’t happen again’. Umm… okay? Is that it? Why won’t it happen again? I mean really why should we trust this statement? It would help if I knew why the affair happened in the first place, and what Kurt feels about it. But since I don’t and the show doesn’t seem inclined to tell me, the only thing I know is that Kurt had an affair and then lied by omission about it for an unspecified period of time. I want to trust him and I want Diane to be able to trust him again, but the writers have to give us something to go on other than his previous good character and unrelated acts of heroism.

Interestingly, writing this has made me feel better about McHart than I have for a year, it’s still much harder to ship them now though. If anyone has anything to add to what I’ve said or wants to take issue with something I’ve written then please feel free to say your piece.

#kurt x diane #mchart #the good fight #the good wife #diane lockhart #kurt mcveigh #tgw meta #tgf meta

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